Two nests with eggs were found by the Crockerland expedition in northwestern Greenland, of which Doctor Ekblaw has sent me the following account:
Though level lands along the shores and the river valleys, or about the pools constitute the feeding grounds of the knots, the high plateaus far back among the hills, covered with glacial gravel or frost-riven rubble, furnish their nesting sites. By this rather anomalous choice of nesting site, the knot was long able to keep its nest and eggs a secret, and it was not until the members of the Crockerland Arctic Expedition persistently ran down every clue that two full clutches of eggs in the nests were discovered in June, 1916, on a high flat-topped ridge back of North Star Bay, at least 3 miles from shore.
The nests are placed in shallow depressions among the brown clumps of _Dryas integrifolia_ and _Elyna bellardi_ which grow among the rubbles and gravel of the high ridges. The nest is merely a small hollow, apparently rudely shaped by the nesting bird. The bird in the nest is so like the terrane about her, that she is well-nigh indistinguishable from it, even to one who knows exactly where she is sitting. Trusting to her effective concealment, the mother bird does not flush from the nest until almost pushed from it. When I placed a camera only a foot from the sitting bird she did not leave it. Though frightened so sorely that she panted and her heart beat visibly, she stuck to her precious eggs. Her head turned to the wind, she crouched flat upon the eggs, her feathers ruffled wide to hide them. When finally I placed my hand upon her, she broke away, trying by the well-known shore-bird device of feigning injury and inability to fly to draw the intruders away. The bird did not appear at all shy and when she failed to draw us away, remained near us, evidently anxious, but trying to appear unconcerned. Now and then she uttered a soft, but sharply pleading call, more plaint than protest. One nesting bird did not leave her eggs until Doctor Hunt pushed her, protesting plaintively quite away from the nest, with the stock of his rifle.
A set of four eggs in Edward Arnold's collection was taken by Capt. Joseph Bernard, July 1, 1918, on Taylor Island, Victoria Land. The nest was in a dry spot in a wet marsh; there was a snow bank 50 yards from the nest and a pond on the south side of the nest 100 yards away. He watched the nest for three or four hours, from a hill 500 yards away, but did not see the bird again.