WRYNECK. 489 



to a timid intruder, it takes advantage of a moment of 

 indecision on his part, and slipping rapidly past darts from 

 a situation whence escape seemed impossible. Should how- 

 ever its disturber be undaunted and, anticipating its flight, 

 seize it in his grasp, it has yet resources left that are 

 astonishing even to those who do not witness them for the 

 first time. It ruffles the feathers of its crown, extends and 

 extraordinarily attenuates its neck, throws its head from 

 side to side, with the most grotesque effect, or twists it 

 round over its back, closing its eyelids as if in death, and, 

 clinging to the fingers with its sharp claws, will hang down- 

 wards as though cataleptic, until suddenly disengaging itself 

 it takes wing to the bewilderment of the beholder.* 



This bird feeds almost exclusively on insects, especially 

 on ants, and may be often seen on the ground at their nests, 

 where it not only clears off such of the animals and their 

 pupae as may be exposed, but removing the soil with its bill, 

 introduces the long vermiform tongue with which it is 

 furnished into the recesses of their passages in search of 

 others that are out of sight. The anatomical structure of 

 this organ, represented in the next vignette, much resembles 

 that found in the Woodpeckers, as already described and 

 figured (pages 466, 476), the hyoid bones being elongated 

 and produced over the head in exactly the same way, and 

 worked by a muscular arrangement of like character, while 

 glands situated beneath the lower jaw secrete a similar 

 glutinous mucus that is conveyed by a duct on each side to 

 the interior of the fauces. This secretion covers the horny 

 tip of the tongue, which can be thrust out to a considerable 

 distance, and on an insect being touched therewith it imme- 

 diately sticks to its surface, and is transferred to the mouth 

 so instantaneously that the eye is unable distinctly to follow 

 the action of the organ. Montagu, after watching a Wry- 

 neck which he had in a cage and provided with emmets and 



* It is these actions, some of which have been well described by Blyth (Field- 

 Nat, ii. p. 50), that prompted Sir T. Browne to write of the Wryneck, which he 

 calls a Hobby-bird (from its arriving in spring with, or a little before, the 

 Hobbies), as being " marut llously subiect to the vertigo," and "sometimes 

 taken in these fitts. " 



