AMERICAN KNOT 135 



wide over the country, bringing joy to other birds of his own kin. The song 

 sounds now more distant, now nearer, when three or four males are singing 

 at the same time. Now and then the bird slides slowly downwards on stiff 

 wings with the tail feathers spread; then again he makes himself invisible 

 in the higher regions of the air, mounting on wings quivering even faster than 

 before. Only now and then the observer — guided by the continuing song — 

 succeeds for a moment in discerning the bird at a certain attitude of flight, 

 when the strong sunlight falls upon his golden-colored breast or light wings. 

 Gradually, as in increasing excitement he executes the convulsive vibrations 

 of his wings, Ins song changes to single deeper notes — following quickly after 

 each other — at last to die out while the bird at the same time drops to the 

 earth on stiff wings strongly bent upward. This fine pairing song may be 

 heard for more than a month everywhere at the breeding places, and it won- 

 derfully enlivens this generally so desolate and silent nature. The song will 

 at certain stages remind of the fluting call note of the curlew (Numenius 

 arquatus), but it varies so much with the temper of the bird that it can 

 hardly be expressed or compared with anything else. 



Nesting. — The nesting habits of the knot long remained unknown ; 

 Arctic explorers were baffled in their attempts to find the nest; and 

 the eggs were among the greatest desiderata of collectors. This is 

 not to be wondered at, however, when w T e consider the remoteness 

 of its far northern breeding grounds, its choice of its nesting sites 

 on high inland plains, its widely scattered nests, and its habit of 

 sitting very closely on its eggs and not returning to them after 

 flushing. Col. H. W. Feilden (1879) writes: 



Night after night I passed out on the hills trying to find the nest of the 

 knot. Not a day passed without my seeing them feeding in small flocks; but 

 they were very wild, rising with shrill cries when one approached within a 

 quarter of a mile of the mud flats on which they were feeding. It is very 

 extraordinary, considering the hundreds of miles traversed by myself and my 

 companions — all of us on the lookout for this bird's eggs, and several of us 

 experienced bird's-nesters — that we found no trace of its breeding until the 

 young in down were discovered. 



Some of the earlier records of knot's nests are open to doubt, but 

 there can be no doubt about the two nests found by Peary in 1909. 

 Referring to his own failure and Peary's success, Colonel Feilden 

 (1920) says: 



The nests and eggs of the knot were obtained by Peary in the vicinity of 

 Floeberg Beach where the " Nares " expedition of 1875-7G wintered on the 

 exposed coast of Grinnell Land north of 82° N. lat, and where Peary, on the 

 Roosevelt, wintered in 1908 and 1909 at Cape Sheridan some 3 or 4 miles 

 farther north, and which was the base for his ever-memorable adventure to 

 the North Pole. Probably the reason why we failed in 1876 to obtain the eggs 

 was due to our ignorance of the localities selected by the birds for nesting. We 

 saw the birds circling over and feeding around the small pools of water left 

 by the melted snow, which here and there were surrounded by sparse tufts 

 of vegetation, and we gave too much of our scanty time to the searching of 

 the marshy spots. Peary's photographs show that in Grinnell Land the knot 

 has its nests on the more elevated slopes and surfaces covered by frost-riven 

 rocks and shales. The finding of a knot's nest in Grinnell Land is not an easy 



