DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 35 



Lake Superior. There he met a flock of Evening Grosbeaks. 

 Here is his story : 



At twilight the bird, which I had before heard to cry in a singular strain 

 and only at this hour, made its appearance close by my tent and a flock of 

 about half a dozen perched on the bushes in my encampment. They ap- 

 proached so near and were so fearless that my canoe-men attempted to catch 

 them, but in vain. I recognized this bird as similar to one in possession of 

 Mr. Schoolcraft at the Sault Ste Marie. Its mournful cry about the hour of 

 my encamping, which was at sunset, had before attracted my attention but I 

 could never get sight of the bird but on this occasion. There is an extensive 

 plain and swamp through which flows the Savannah river, covered with a 

 thick growth of sapin trees. My inference was then, and is now, that this 

 bird dwells in such dark retreats and leaves them at the approach of night. 



This twilight reputation was fastened forever upon the de- 

 fenseless bird when William Cooper in January, 1825 described 

 the bird in the annals of the New York Lyceum (Volume I, 

 page 220) as Fringilla vespertina. 



Prince Lucian Bonaparte in Volume II of his American Or- 

 nithology took up the tale. He saw two males that had been 

 shot early in the spring at Athabasca Lake near the Rocky 

 Mountains in the collection of Mr. Leadbeater of London, both 

 of which were males. Accordingly he wrote: 



Only at twilight they are heard to cry in a singular strain. The mournful 

 sound uttered at such an unusual hour strikes the traveler's ear but the bird 

 itself is seldom seen. . . . No difference of any consequence is observable 

 between the sexes although it might be said that the female is a little less in 

 size and rather duller in plumage. 



In 1832 Nuttall in his "Manual of Ornithology," page 526, 

 embroidered the original surmise: 



They appear to pass most of the day in the deep and lonely swamps. . . . 

 From these they sally forth in small famiUes to feed toward the approach of 

 night and at this season in the dusk of twilight their strange and mournful 

 notes are heard from the forests, while the sad and serenading minstrel him- 

 self remains concealed, though at other times they are so fearless or incautious 

 as to suflfer themselves to be seized almost by the hand. 



On May 27, 1836 Townsend writing from the Columbia river 

 corrects the mistakes of Delafield, Bonaparte and Nuttall and 



