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 1876 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 11th, 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 11th. In Arctic Siberia the repre- 
sentative is TZ: 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 of Saxi/raga 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 1°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 buffish tinge; legs and feet dull olive. 
