A RUNAWAY DAY 71 
myth is perpetuated that the evening grosbeak, or 
Hespervphona vespertina vespertina, 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- 
