A Summer with the Birds (4/7). The Wryneck, an Outstanding Contortionist

A Summer with the Birds (4/7). The Wryneck, an Outstanding Contortionist

A passionate observer, David Rosane tells us in this summer column about the most beautiful encounters of his life as an ornithologist. This week: the wryneck.

In a next life, I will be a witch. I will fly away on my broomstick and, in my laboratory, I will have a captive wryneck as a fetish animal. This is how I imagined the beginning of a children’s story when, on returning from a hike in the Paris region with an ornithologist friend, one morning in August, I began to document myself on the strange bird that I had just seen for the third time in my life.

He was on the ground, hopping around looking for prey, then flew away immediately as we approached, disappearing into the thickness of a hedge. We never saw him again. He vanished into thin air. Just a few seconds to admire him, but my heart skipped a beat in my chest, it was so moving to see a bird I hadn’t seen since childhood.

I named the wryneck. The size of a large sparrow, with exemplary discretion, this slow-moving bird weaves through the vegetation, between orchards, woods and bushes, in search of insects. And especially ants, its favorite food, which it devours by pecking at the soft wood of dead branches or on the ground, with its beak in the shape of pointed scissors.

A bird sought after, therefore, as much as the Grail, because it blends perfectly into the vegetation, so much so that its plumage, a sumptuous mosaic of browns, grays, whites and buff beige, makes it invisible. One would swear it was a piece of wood, sometimes motionless, sometimes flying. A magical being, in short.

Feathered Serpent

Why “wryneck”? Because it can turn its head almost 180°, “twisting” its neck. It parades this way to scare its enemies. It then snakes its upper body from left to right while throwing its head back and hissing like a viper. The worst part is that it works. Because of these bizarre convulsions, humans, since ancient times, have welcomed the bird into their belief systems. In Greek mythology, the daughter of Pan and Echo, made the mistake of casting a spell on Zeus. She was promptly punished and transformed into Jynx – the Greek name for the wryneck, a bird common in the Mediterranean and therefore well known to the population at the time. Later, this name gave the English verb to jynx which means “to cast a spell on someone, a curse, bad luck”. Jynx Torquilla is today the Latin name of the species.

In my upcoming tale, the witch I dreamed of won’t last long. As in the Middle Ages, she will use the bird locked in her laboratory to punish her enemies, making the poor bird spin on a wire while reciting many incantations. Then she will be punished in turn by a character I will invent, Windar (Darwin, in verlan), the god of science, unhappy with this treatment. He will free the wryneck from its cage and transform the witch into… an anthill, so that the hungry bird can finally sit down at the table. Nothing less!

Everything you need to know about the wryneck.

  • Distant cousin of the woodpecker The wryneck is said to be an “aberrant” woodpecker. A distant cousin of woodpeckers (including the green, the great spotted, the spotted, etc.), there are only two species in the world: the wryneck, which summers in Eurasia and winters in the tropics, and the red-throated wryneck, resident of the African continent. Two toes forward, two toes back The wryneck shares some traits with woodpeckers, including its zygodactyl feet (two toes forward, two toes back), and a long tongue for fetching its prey. On the other hand, it does not know how to climb trees vertically like its cousins, nor can it dig its own nesting hole.
  • Stop right there! When researchers ring the wryneck, or catch it in a net to study it, it immediately resorts to its contortionist parade, perfectly mimicking the angry snake. This reflex has been known since Aristotle, the first to hypothesize that the bird was thus imitating the viper!
  • Two fingers forward, two fingers back The wryneck shares some traits with woodpeckers, including its zygodactyl feet (two toes forward, two backward) and a long tongue for fetching its prey. However, it does not know how to climb trees vertically like its cousins, nor can it dig its own nesting hole.
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