Only four species of wryneck are known to exist, and, of these, three are confined to the Dark Continent, while the fourth is a great traveller.
The wryneck is as retiring in disposition as the sparrow is obtrusive.
Like very many other migrants, the wryneck does not appear to be powerful on the wing.
At most seasons of the year the wryneck is a remarkably silent bird.
The wryneck breeds neither in the plains of India nor, I believe, in the Himalayas, but its nest has been recorded in Kashmir.
The wryneck is not singular among birds in uttering its note only at certain seasons of the year.
The wryneck derives its name from a curious habit it has of twisting its neck as it seeks for insects on a tree-trunk or mound.
Other naturalists have found the wryneck in India equally tame.
Bishop Stanley records an instance of a wryneck which "lived for a year and a half in a cage, and never appeared to show impatience during its confinement; it was observed always to take its food by throwing out its long tongue.
The latter sometimes feed upon the ground, but this is the exception rather than the rule, while with the wryneck the reverse holds good.
Once, at Lahore, I nearly trod upon a wryneck that was feeding on the ground.
During the winter the wryneck seems to visit all parts of India, except possibly the Malabar coast, and it is sufficiently common in South India to have a Tamil name--Moda nulingadu.
From their insular point of view they are quite right because it is the only wryneck they ever see unless they leave their island.
Unlike the woodpecker the wryneck does not hollow out its hole for itself.
The incident seemed to show that the wryneck had been scarce at this place for a very long period.
All at once he remembered that he knew, or had known formerly, the wryneck very well, but he had never learnt its name.
He is assisted by the nuthatch; and in summer the wryneck comes (if he still lives), and deftly picks up the little active ants that are always wildly careering over the boles.
The rôle played by ocular affections, by troubles of vision and of accommodation, in the genesis of wryneck is frequently no insignificant one, and it is curious how often patients attribute the mischief to the strain of overwork in bad light.
The Wryneck does not tap and climb like the Woodpecker, but it uses its tongue in the same way.
The note of the Wryneck is so peculiar that it can be confounded with none of the natural sounds of the country; a loud, rapid, harsh cry of pay-pay-pay from a bird about the size of a lark may be referred without hesitation to the Wryneck.
The Wryneck is a common bird in the south-eastern counties of England and to the west as far as Somersetshire; but I have never heard its note in Devon or Cornwall; it is rare also in the northern counties.
The Wryneck deposits its eggs on fragments of decayed wood within a hollow tree, and makes scarcely any nest.
Last year the wryneck was a scarce bird in this neighbourhood; in all my walks I heard but two or three, and at long intervals.
The same oak at the end of the garden, where the wryneck calls, is also the favourite tree of a cock chaffinch, and every morning he sings there for at least two hours at a stretch.
I have heard the wryneck calling in the oak at the end of the garden every morning this season before rising, and suspect, from his constant presence, that a nest will be built close by.
