122 GLIMPSES OF INDIAN BIRDS 



particularise the cuckoo, the kingfisher, or the swallow 

 of which we are speaking. However, as regards 

 wrynecks, India is no better off than England. One 

 species only visits that country ; hence Indians 

 may indulge in the luxury of speaking of it as the 

 wryneck. This is a bird not much larger than a 

 sparrow and attired as plainly as the hen of 

 that species. But here the resemblance ends. The 

 wryneck is as retiring in disposition as the sparrow 

 is obtrusive. I defy any one to dwell a week in a 

 locality that boasts of a pair of sparrows without 

 noticing them, but many a man spends the greater 

 part of his life in India without once observing a 

 wryneck. The greyish-brown plumage of the wryneck, 

 delicately mottled and barred all over with a darker 

 shade of brown, harmonises very closely with the 

 trunks of trees or the bare earth on which it spends 

 so much of its time, and thus it often eludes observa- 

 tion. 



The wryneck, like its cousins the woodpeckers, 

 feeds almost exclusively on insects which it secures by 

 means of the tongue. This wormlike structure is 

 several inches in length and is hard and sharp, barbed 

 at the tip and covered elsewhere with very sticky 

 saliva. It can be shot out suddenly to transfix the 

 bird's quarry, and then as rapidly retracted. The 

 tongue is so long that when retracted it coils up 

 inside the head. Although wrynecks feed a good deal 

 on trees, they are far less addicted to them than 

 woodpeckers are. The latter sometimes feed upon 

 the ground, but this is the exception rather than the 



