136 BULLETIN" 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



task, and it is highly commendable that Peary on his return from the North 

 Pole to Cape Sheridan, and in the midst of his engrossing and more important 

 duties found occasions to take the unique photographs here reproduced. 



Two nests with eggs were found by the Crockerland expedition in 

 northwestern Greenland, of which Doctor Ekblaw has sent me the 

 following account: 



Though level lands along the shores and the river valleys, or about the pools 

 constitute the feeding grounds of the knots, the high plateaus far back among 

 the hills, covered with glacial gravel or frost-riven rubble, furnish their nesting 

 sites. By this rather anomalous choice of nesting site, the knot was long able 

 to keep its nest and eggs a secret, and it was not until the members of the 

 Crockerland Arctic Expedition persistently ran down every clue that two full 

 clutches of eggs in the nests were discovered in June, 1916, on a high flat- 

 topped ridge back of North Star Bay, at least 3 miles from shore. 



The nests are placed in shallow depressions among the brown clumps of 

 Dryas intefjrifolia and Elyna, bellardi which grow among the rubbles and 

 gravel of the high ridges. The nest is merely a small hollow, apparently rudely 

 shaped by the nesting bird. The bird in the nest is so like the terrane about 

 her, that she is well-nigh indistinguishable from it, even to one who knows 

 exactly where she is sitting. Trusting to her effective concealment, the 

 mother bird does not flush from the nest until almost pushed from it. When 

 I placed a camera only a foot from the sitting bird she did not leave it. 

 Though frightened so sorely that she panted and her heart beat visibly, she 

 stuck to her precious eggs. Her head turned to the wind, she crouched flat 

 upon the eggs, her feathers ruffled wide to hide them. When finally I placed 

 my hand upon her, she broke away, trying by the well-known shore-bird device 

 of feigning injury and inability to fly to draw the intruders away. The bird did 

 not appear at all shy and when she failed to draw us away, remained near us, 

 evidently anxious, but trying to appear unconcerned. Now and then she ut- 

 tered a soft, but sharply pleading call, more plaint than protest. One nesting 

 bird did not leave her eggs until Doctor Hunt pushed her, protesting plaintively 

 quite away from the nest, with the stock of his rifle. 



A set of four eggs in Edward Arnold's collection was taken by 

 Capt. Joseph Bernard, July 1, 1918, on Taylor Island, Victoria Land. 

 The nest was in a dry spot in a wet marsh ; there was a snow bank 

 50 yards from the nest and a pond on the south side of the nest 100 

 yards away. He watched the nest for three or four hours, from a 

 hill 500 yards away, but did not see the bird again. 



Eggs. — The knot lays four eggs, perhaps sometimes only three. 

 The eggs are ovate pyriform in shape, with a slight gloss. In the 

 set of three eggs, taken by the Crockerland expedition and now in 

 Col. John E. Thayer's collection, the ground colors vary from " pale 

 olive buff " to " olive buff " ; they are spotted all over, but more 

 thickly at the larger end, with small spots or scrawls of " sepia," 

 " Saccardo's umber," and " Vandyke brown," with underlying spots 

 of " pallid " and " pale brownish drab." 



The other set of four eggs, from the same source and now in the 

 American Museum of Natural History, is thus described for me by 

 Ludlow Griscom: 



