The Knot or Robin Snipe is a bird of several names, as it is also called the Red-breasted Ash-colored Sandpiper, the Gray-back and the Gray Snipe. It is quite cosmopolitan, breeding in the far north of both hemispheres, but in winter migrating southward and wintering in the climate of the southern United States and Central America. The Knot belongs to the Snipe family (Scolopacidae), which includes one hundred or more species, about forty-five of which are inhabitants ,of North America. Nearly all the species breed in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere. These birds frequent the shores of large bodies of water and are seldom observed far from their vicinity. Their bills are long and are used in seeking food in the soft mud of the shore.

The Knot visits the great lakes during its migrations and is frequently observed at that time. Its food, which consists of the smaller crustaceans and shells, can be as readily obtained on the shores of these lakes as on those of the ocean, which it also follows.

Dr. Ridgway tells us that "Adult specimens vary individually in the relative extent of the black, gray and reddish colors on the upper parts; gray usually predominates in the spring, the black in midsummer. Sometimes there is no rufous whatever on the upper surface. The cinnamon color of the lower parts also varies in intensity."

Little is known of the nest and eggs of the Knot owing to its retiring habits at the nesting time and the fact that it breeds in the region of the Arctic Circle, so little frequented by man. One authentic report, that of Lieutenant A. W. Greely, describes a single egg that he succeeded in obtaining near Fort Conger while commanding an expedition to Lady Franklin Sound. This egg was a little more than an inch in length and about one inch in diameter. Its color was a "light pea-green, closely spotted with brown in small specks about the size of a pinhead."