A RUNAWAY DAY 71 



myth is perpetuated that the evening grosbeak, or 

 Hesperiphona vespertina vesperiina, sings only at twi- 

 light. It all began in 1823, when one Major Dela- 

 field, a boundary agent of the United States govern- 

 ment, was camping northwest of Lake Superior. 

 There he met a flock of evening grosbeaks in the twi- 

 light, and instantly jumped to the conclusion that the 

 birds were accustomed to spend the day in the dark 

 recesses of impassable swamps and come out and 

 sing only at evening. 



As a matter of fact, the evening grosbeak goes to 

 bed at dark, like all other respectable, reputable 

 birds. Its song is a wandering, jerky warble that the 

 singer himself recognizes as a miserable failure, for 

 he often stops and looks discontented and then re- 

 mains silent for a minute before trying again. It 

 sounds like the early part of a robin's song, but is 

 always suddenly checked as if the performer were 

 out of breath. The guess of the imaginative major 

 was later elaborated by Prince Lucien Bonaparte, 

 Nuttall, and even by later ornithologists, Coues 

 among them, not one of whom had ever seen or 

 heard the bird. Coues's description in his "Key to 

 North American Birds" is worth quoting as a speci- 

 men of the rhetoric in which a past generation of 

 ornithologists dared to indulge. 



"A bird of distinguished appearance, whose very 

 name suggests the far-away land of the dipping sun 

 and the tuneful romance which the wild bird throws 

 around the close of day. Clothed in striking color 

 contrast of black, white and gold, he seems to repre- 



