596 KNOT. 



To Iceland and the south of Greenland the Knot is a visitor on 

 the way to its breeding-grounds, which appear to be chiefly in North 

 Greenland and Arctic America. The earlier explorers found birds 

 on Melville Peninsula, and abundantly on Melville Island, one of the 

 North Georgian or Parry group ; but no eggs are known to have been 

 brought back. On July 30th 1S76 Col. Feilden, naturalist to H.M.S. 

 ' Alert,' obtained a male and three nestlings near a small lake on 

 Grinnell Land in lat. 82° 33' N., while Mr. Chichester Hart, 

 naturalist to H.M.S. ' Discovery,' had captured a brood of four in 

 lat. 81° 44' on the nth, and three more were taken next day: a beau- 

 tiful group of the old and young being in the British Museum. A 

 bird obtained by Gen. Greely near Discovery Harbour contained 

 a hard-shelled egg; the Peary Expedition of 1892 found the species 

 evidently breeding; and a female "with full-sized yolks" was shot at 

 Point Barrow, Alaska, on July nth. In Arctic Siberia the repre- 

 sentative is T. crassirostris, which has a black breast in summer, 

 and visits India in winter ; though our bird occurs sparingly in China 

 and Japan on migration, when it reaches Australia and New Zealand. 

 It has not, however, been obtained on the Yenesei or even on 

 the Petchora, though one was found by the Bremen Expedition 

 among the eastern islands of the Spitsbergen group. On passage it 

 swarms on the coasts of Western Europe, and passes down the west 

 side of Africa to Damara-land ; while in America it is well-known 

 on the Atlantic sea-board, as well as on the Great Lakes and in the 

 Mississippi Valley, and exceptionally visits Jamaica and Brazil. 



There is a presumption that an egg in the Museum at Cambridge 

 was laid by a Knot in the aviary of the late Lord Lilford. The birds 

 observed by Col. Feilden on and after July 5th were feeding eagerly 

 on the buds o{ Saxifraga oppositifolia, while the stomach of one killed 

 at Discovery Bay contained two caterpillars, a bee, and pieces of an 

 Alga ; in this country small bivalves are freely eaten. The Knot is 

 remarkably gregarious, and the young are very unsuspicious on 

 their arrival. No wader strikes the lighthouses more frequently. 



The adult in breeding-dress (in the foreground) has the head and 

 hind-neck reddish-brown with darker streaks ; feathers of the mantle 

 blackish, spotted with chestnut and margined with white; tail-coverts 

 white barred with black ; cheeks, throat and breast chestnut ; flanks 

 and under tail-coverts whitish, mottled with black. Length 10 in. 

 (bill I '5), wing 6"5 in. In winter the upper parts are ash-grey, and 

 the under-parts are white with grey flecks. In the young the 

 feathers of the mantle have crescentic ash-coloured bars and dull 

 white tips ; under-parts with a huffish tinge ; legs and feet dull olive. 



