The Knot. ^39 



hood above mentioned, they would naturally pass very near Iceland en route, as I 

 believe that they, and a great number of other birds, do. The Knot winters in 

 Africa, India and Ceylon, Australasia and South America, down to Brazil, but 

 not on the west coast. It passes along our coasts in spring and atitumn, some 

 remaining all the winter, if the weather be open. Adult birds are first to return 

 in autumn, as is usual amongst the Limicolse, and I have two shot in July ; but 

 at the end of the first week in August, young birds begin to appear, mingled 

 with adults in faded summer dress, soon forming flocks from one hundred to 

 possibly five thousand strong. It passes down the China coasts on migration in 

 smaller numbers than with us. 



Description of adult in summer : bill black ; iris umber ; crown, shoulders, 

 back, scapulars, and tertiaries, black, with chestnut margins, which on the tertiaries 

 form pairs of spots ; eyebrow fulvous, spotted with dusky grey, meeting on the 

 back of the neck and forming a half collar ; wings sooty black, with white shafts 

 to the feathers and white margins, most conspicuous on the secondaries ; wing- 

 coverts like the back ; upper tail-coverts white, barred with black and stained 

 irregularly with chestnut; tail ashy grey; under the eye a dusky streak ending 

 at the ear-coverts ; chin light fawn ; throat, sides of neck, breast, and rest of 

 under parts chestnut ; axillaries white, imperfectly barred with grey ; legs and 

 feet black. Length 9^-10 inches, closed wing 6i-6|. (Male, Yorkshire coast, 24, 

 7, '88; female, Northumberland, July, 1876). 



Adults in winter : upper parts light grey, with a slight brown tinge, obscurely 

 streaked with black on the crown ; wing-coverts like the back (except the least 

 series, which are considerably darker) and bordered with white ; wing quills as in 

 summer ; rump and upper tail-coverts white, barred with black ; eyebrow and 

 under surface white, the throat minutely spotted with dusky, the upper breast 

 and flanks with semi-lunar dusky spots; legs green-grey. 



Young birds resemble the adults in winter, but have the crown black, with 

 fulvous edges to the feathers ; the feathers of the back and wings narrowly edged 

 with a black line followed by a sandy fringe; under parts, except the throat, 

 suffused with dirty buff, and spotted with dusky. 



Nestling: "iris black ; throat satin white; back beaiitifiilly mottled 



tortoise-shell" (Feilden, "Ibis," 1877, p. 408). 



The nest is said to consist of withered grass and leaves, loosely laid on the 

 earth, near a stream, inland. Four eggs are the full number, doubtless, but three 

 nestlings were oftener found with the parent by the "Alert" and "Discovery" 

 Expedition. There is an egg in the Smithsonian Museum, at Washington (taken, 

 I believe, from the oviduct of a bird), of which I have seen a carefully finished 



