The purple sandpiper is an inhabitant of the British coasts in autumn and winter, and is occasionally seen associating with dunlins on the sand and mud flats, and may readily be distinguished by its darker colour and its lumpier figure, caused by the thickness of its winter plumage. But its favourite haunts are rocky shores, where it feeds among the stranded seaweed on marine insects, small shrimps, and other crustaceans. It is, in fact, a sandpiper with the feeding habits of the turnstone. It is known to breed on the Faröes, where it nests on the fells and mountains and lays four eggs, pale green or olive, blotched with reddish brown, with purplish under-markings. Its eggs have never been found within the British Islands, but it is probable that a few pairs breed annually on some of the islands and on the mainland of Scotland. In its summer haunts in the arctic regions it is said to be the most abundant sandpiper. With us it is not a common species, and is seen in small flocks of half a dozen to a dozen birds.
Knot.
Tringa canutus.
Crown and neck reddish brown with darker streaks; mantle blackish; the feathers spotted with chestnut and margined with white; tail-coverts white barred with black; cheeks, throat, and breast chestnut. Length, ten inches. In winter the upper parts are ash-grey and the under parts white flecked with grey.
Fig. 103.—Knot. ¼ natural size.
This richly coloured and pretty sandpiper with a strange name is one of two species in this order of birds of which the eggs are not known to ornithologists, or do not exist in collections. It is a regular visitor to the British coasts on migration in August, but many birds remain in this country until the following May. In some seasons they are very abundant, especially on the north-east coast of England; and in former times they were esteemed a great delicacy, and were netted in large numbers, to be fattened, like dotterels and ruffs and reeves, on bread-and-milk for the table. According to Camden (‘Britannia,’ 1607), the bird was named after King Canute on account of his excessive fondness for its flesh. Drayton, adopting this explanation of the name, wrote in his ‘Polyolbion’:
The Knot that called was Canutus Bird of old,
Of that great King of Danes, his name that still doth hold,
His apetite to please, that farre and neare was sought,