Your Birding Month

The Wryneck is our Bird of the Month, plus skuas, finches and migration and rarity predictions

In the UK, there are four regular species of woodpecker. Three fit the usual mould of boldly-patterned birds which creep up tree trunks and branches, propped up by stiff, pointed tail feathers. But the fourth is a different kettle of fish. The Wryneck is an anomaly in the woodpecker world. It looks nothing like a woodpecker, really, unless you look carefully at its zygodactyl feet (two toes forwards, two toes backwards), or get to see its long sticky tongue hoovering up ants (which at least resembles the feeding habit of the Green Woodpecker). It is shaped more like a large warbler than a ‘conventional’ woodpecker, lacking the stiff ‘prop’ tail feathers, and has plumage more like a nightjar, in wonderful, cryptic patterns.

Though once reasonably widespread breeders in the UK, the Cuckoo’s Mate (as it was colloquially called) is just about extinct as a breeding bird these days. Instead, we see them as scarce passage migrants, especially in the earlier autumnal months, and especially close to the east and south coasts, as well as the Northern Isles (though they can and do occur inland in very small numbers, too). We are talking about fewer than 300 birds each year, passing through the country.

These are great looking, fascinating birds, which are mostly seen shuffling unobtrusively (and largely invisibly) along the ground seeking ants. They can be wary, but then again, can also be exceptionally tame.

You can’t predict their behaviour. After all, there is nothing predictable or conventional about the wonderful Wryneck.