The wrynecks (genus ''Jynx'') are a small but distinctive group of small

Old World The "Old World" () is a term for Afro-Eurasia coined by Europeans after 1493, when they became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia in the Eastern Hemisphere, previously ...

woodpecker Woodpeckers are part of the bird family (biology), family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar and the extreme ...

s. ''Jynx'' is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

''iunx'', the Eurasian wryneck. These

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

s get their English name from their ability to turn their heads almost 180°. When disturbed at the nest, they use this

snake Snakes are elongated limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales much like other members of the group. Many species of snakes have s ...

-like head twisting and hissing as a threat display. It has occasionally been called "snake-bird" for that reason. Like the true woodpeckers, wrynecks have large heads, long tongues, which they use to extract their

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

prey, and zygodactyl feet, with two toes pointing forward and two backwards, but they lack the stiff tail feathers that the true woodpeckers use when climbing trees, so they are more likely than their relatives to perch on a branch rather than an upright trunk. The sexes have a similar appearance. Their bills are shorter and less dagger-like than in the true woodpeckers, but their chief prey is

ant Ants are Eusociality, eusocial insects of the Family (biology), family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the Taxonomy (biology), order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from Vespoidea, vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cre ...

s and other insects, which they find in decaying wood or almost bare soil. They reuse woodpecker holes for nesting, rather than making their own holes. The eggs are white, as with many hole nesters. The two species have cryptic plumage, with intricate patterning of greys and browns. The adult moults rapidly between July and September, although some moult continues in its winter quarters.

Taxonomy and etymology

The

s are an ancient bird family consisting of three subfamilies, the wrynecks, the piculets and the true woodpeckers, Picinae.

DNA sequencing DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. The ...

and

phylogenetic analysis In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data ...

show that the wrynecks are a sister

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

to other woodpeckers including the Picinae and probably diverged early from the rest of the family.Gorman (2022) p. 3. The wryneck subfamily Jynginae has one genus, ''Jynx'', introduced in 1758 by Swedish naturalist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

in the 10th edition of his ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the Orthographic ligature, ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Sweden, Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the syste ...

''. Linnaeus placed a single species in the genus, the Eurasian wryneck (''Jynx torquilla''), which is therefore the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

. The genus name ''Jynx'' is from the

name for the Eurasian wryneck, ''ιυγξ'', '' iunx'', and ''ruficollis'' is from the Latin , "rufous" and "neck". The English "wryneck" refers to the habit of birds in this genus of twisting and writhing their necks when agitated. It was first recorded in 1585. The red-throated wryneck was first identified by German ornithologist

Johann Georg Wagler Johann Georg Wagler (28 March 1800 – 23 August 1832) was a German herpetologist and ornithologist. Wagler was assistant to Johann Baptist von Spix, and gave lectures in zoology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich after it was moved t ...

in 1830.Gorman (2022) pp. 35–36. It is also known as the rufous-necked wryneck or red-breasted wryneck.Gorman (2014) pp. 38–39. The two wrynecks form a

superspecies In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

that probably separated early in their evolution from the piculets, although there has subsequently been only limited divergence between the ''Jynx'' species.Gorman (2022) pp. 39–40.

Fossil record

The woodpecker family appears to have diverged from other Piciformes about fifty million years ago, and a 2017 study considered that the split between ''Jynx'' and other woodpeckers occurred about 22.5million years ago. A fossil dating from the early

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

, more than twenty million years ago, consisting of the

distal Standard anatomical terms of location are used to describe unambiguously the anatomy of humans and other animals. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position provi ...

end of a

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bird bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) a ...

had some ‘’Jynx’’-like features, but was classed as an early piculet. By the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

, between 2.6million and 11,700 years ago.

Species

The two species in ''Jynx'' are restricted to the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

biogeographic realm A biogeographic realm is the broadest biogeography, biogeographic division of Earth's land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial animal, terrestrial organisms. They are subdivided into bioregions, which are further subdivid ...

and Africa. The Eurasian wryneck breeds across temperate Europe and Asia, and one of only two

woodpeckers to undertake long-distance

migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...

mainly wintering in sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia.Gorman (2022) pp. 104–106. The rufous-necked wryneck has a disjunct distribution confined to sub-Saharan Africa. It is resident, although there may be local movements and post-breeding dispersal.Gorman (2022) p. 42. Both wrynecks have several geographical

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

.Gorman (2022) pp. 4–6.

References

Cited texts

* *

External links

Ageing and sexing of Eurasian wryneck (PDF; 4.6 MB) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze
* Fernández Fernández, Álvaro (2015)
«La ἴυγξ mediadora: ornitología, magia amorosa, mitología y teología caldaico-neoplatónica»
''Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos'', 25: p. 223-271. {{Authority control * Picidae