SCOLOPACID^. 339 



fearless ; flying low over the water, they -will, with misplaced confidence, 

 settle on the ooze at the gunner's feet, and when fired at will hardly 

 trouble to rise on wing to seek safety. As the flocks are noticed crossing 

 the sands it is easy, by running, to intercept their line of flight ; there 

 will be no change made in its direction, and the heedless birds will 

 advance securely to their fate. These autumn flocks appear to be com- 

 posed chiefly of immature birds in a silvery-grey plumage with buff- 

 coloured breast and grey backs, with semicircular edgings of white 

 to the feathers ; the few old birds among them may be distinguished 

 by the faint tinge of salmon-colour still remaining on the breast. Being 

 very good birds for the table, Knots are greatly persecuted by the shore- 

 shooters, and their numbers become less every year on our Korth Devon 

 sands. 



The Knot seeks very high latitudes for its breeding-stations, and has 

 been closely associated with the search for the North-west Passage. It 

 was known that this Sandpiper placed its nest in some regions further to 

 the north than had yet been explored, and it was certain that wherever 

 the bird could breed there must be open water, land on which it could set 

 its feet, and plenty of food supplied either by the water or by the land, or 

 by both, for the maintenance of itself and its offspring. On its way north 

 the bird passed Iceland and Greenland ; and it would hardly leave those 

 countries, which ofter a breeding-station to countless hordes of wild-fowl, in 

 preference for another more sterile and worse off as regards supply of food. 

 The inference was, there was still a country to be discovered near to the 

 Pole with an open sea and comparatively genial climate ; and it was 

 mainly through reliance on this argument that the ' Discovery* and the 

 ' Alert ' were despatched to the far north in the summer of 1S75. The 

 expedition failed to discover this mild circumpolar region ; but on some 

 islands, in very nearly the highest latitude it was able to attain, some 

 Knots were detected breeding by Capt. Feilden, and, although no eggs 

 were obtained, some young in down were brought back to England, 

 which may now be seen in the Bird Gallery at the South Kensington 

 Xatural-History Museum — an interesting trophy from the Pole. But 

 the Knot must occasionally nest in lower latitudes; for Mr. Booth 

 ('Field,' Dec. 16th, 1870) saw little flocks of young Knots on the 

 Dornoch Firth, in Sutherlandshire, as early as Sth July, and it seems 

 impossible that they could have been reared near the Pole, where every- 

 thing would be frozen against the parent birds until the middle of June, 

 and there would be no time for young Knots to be hatched and able to 

 fly until the beginning of August, and it is therefore natural to suppose 

 that those seen by Mr. Booth must have come from a nesting-station closer 

 at hand, perhaps somewhere on the Finnish or jSTorth Russian coast. And 

 Dr. Saxby states, in his * Birds of Shetland,' that he has little doul)t that 

 the Knot occasionally breeds in the northern districts of those islands, ;is 

 he has met with young ones so weak upon the wing that it seemed 

 impos;<i])le for them to have crossed the sea — "indeed, they ratlior 

 fluttered than flew." 



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