Tails, wings and spreadsheets: At wing bee, biologists search for details on Washington’s forest grouse populations

Matt Brinkman knew something was off as soon as he pulled the wing and tail out of the brown paper bag. The bag was dated Sept. 18. A grouse hunter had dropped it into a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife wing barrel near Bonaparte Lake. Some time later, it was moved to a freezer. On a recent Wednesday morning, it was brought to a warehouse in north Spokane, where it was to be processed alongside hundreds of other small brown bags containing grouse parts for WDFW’s east side wing bee. A wing bee is about gathering information. Wings and tails contain a lot of it. Brinkman, a WDFW biologist, was one of about a dozen people tasked with searching each feathered appendage for signs that...