308 
SCOLOPACID.E. 
killed at niglit^ when they apparently feed more than by day, both 
in darkness and moonlight. Shooters are drawn to their vicinity 
in the dark of the moon/^ by their singular chucking call when 
engaged feeding. A person, hearing the call of these birds one 
very dark night in October, sought them with a lantern, holding 
the light side towards them, when they admitted his approach 
within a few feet, and did not take wing, but ran before the light 
as he advanced. The following remarks on their call were made 
by me : — February Y4^,lS4i ^. — Frosty weather; a number of knots 
were feeding in the bay, close to the side of the road on the 
Antrim shore ; the call is a double note, rather peculiar, perhaps 
a little mournful : it sounded like ventriloquism, as if the birds 
were in the air instead of on the ground. Could this have been 
accidental, or owing to a particular state of the atmosphere 
The flight of the knot is very swift and strong. On the 1st of 
February, 1845, I noticed a large flock of from a thousand 
to tw^elve hundred, sweeping over the banks on the Antrim side 
of BeKast Bay, rising high into the air, and passing through 
evolutions similar to those of the dunlin. The first time they 
swept past, though at some distance, they actually startled me 
by their silvery flash. It was within two hours of high-water, 
and the atmosphere was in a most singular state. There w^as 
frost, and had been some for a few days previously; the sea- 
banks, over which the tide flow^s, and that have usually a cold, 
wet, muddy aspect, now appeared dry, as if baked, and of a rich 
brown and dark -green colour. When the large body of knots 
alighted, a great number of dunlins took their stand at one 
extremity of the flock. They w^ere nearly half a mile from the 
road on which I was, and as every individual of the many hun- 
dreds w^as distinctly seen of a silvery whiteness running about 
feeding on what appeared a rich green carpet of Zostera marina, 
St. John tells us that “ there are very large flocks of the oyster-catcher, the curlew, 
and the knot, on the sand-banks, &c. (of Morayshire, in April). Whenever these 
birds want to alight on any spot, if the wind is at all high, they invaluably pitch with 
their heads straight to windward ; if they come down the wind to their resting-place, 
they first fly past it, and then turning back against the wind, alight with their heads 
in that direction.” — ‘Tour in Sutherland/ vol. i. p. 207 . Although they do this, 
they prefer to have the wind with them in their flights. 
