That’s a funny looking sparrow, I thought. Female house sparrow ? It was hardly three yards away on the garden path, but my view was compromised by the raindrops on the back-door glass.
Ting-Wei (廷維) HUNG (洪) – https://macaulaylibrary.org/photo/45438521
A wryneck ! I never knew they were so small. A member of the woodpecker family. I thought they’d be about Greater Spotted size. Not so. Sparrow sized. But intricately striped, barred, dotted and mottled in brown and black and grey-white – with orange spots on the wing I notice. Nature’s riposte to the most delicate weavings of humans. Jynx torquilla by the way. One of only two wryneck species – the other lives in Africa – and a summer visitor to the UK. It used to be a common breeding bird in England. Now it is usually seen – when seen – just passing by.[1] It dines mostly on ants.
‘He is a singular bird’ says W H Hudson[2], and observes that ‘his beauty only appears when he is seen very near.’ I was lucky to see him so close-up then, despite the raindrops.
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