The adjective 'wryneck'd' refers, not to the instrument itself, which was straight, but to the player, whose head has to be slightly twisted round to get at the mouthpiece.    From Wordnik.com.  [Shakespeare and Music With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries] Reference

The wryneck was thought to build the nest, and hatch and feed the young of the cuckoo.    From Wordnik.com.  [Welsh Folk-Lore a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales] Reference

The arrangement of the toes is such as has been described in all birds with the exception of the wryneck.    From Wordnik.com.  [On the Parts of Animals] Reference

It shares this quality with only two other birds, I think: the wryneck, an aberrant woodpecker, and another night bird, the nightjar.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Year on the Wing] Reference

Here only two of the toes are in front, the other two behind; and the reason for this is that the body of the wryneck is not inclined forward so much as that of other birds.    From Wordnik.com.  [On the Parts of Animals] Reference

Birds that fly high in air are in all cases four-toed: that is, the greater part have three toes in front and one behind in place of a heel; some few have two in front and two behind, as the wryneck.    From Wordnik.com.  [The History of Animals] Reference

In the garden outside, the wryneck (as is his fashion in May) was calling.    From Wordnik.com.  [Hereward, the Last of the English] Reference

A wryneck made fast to it by a little chain, and by springing from spoke to spoke kept it in continual motion.    From Wordnik.com.  [Complete Project Gutenberg Georg Ebers Works] Reference

"Aye, that I will -- that I will: but my head is considering of affairs," answered Master Short -- he of the wryneck.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Splendid Spur] Reference

In the book was a Latin recipe for drying the poor wryneck, and using him as a philtre which should compel the love of any person desired.    From Wordnik.com.  [Hereward, the Last of the English] Reference

He, however, treated her as the harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep her appointment unless an accident delayed.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Complete] Reference

Pied and golden-backed woodpeckers, companies of nuthatches, and, here and there, a wryneck move about on the trunks and branches, looking into every cranny for insects.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Bird Calendar for Northern India] Reference

Says the author quoted above: "When the sitting bird is interfered with, she defends her treasures with great courage, hissing like a wryneck, and vigorously striking at her aggressor with her sharp bill.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Our Bird Comrades] Reference

A female wryneck, whose nest was daily robbed of the egg she laid in it, continued to lay a new one, which grew smaller and smaller, till, when she had laid her twenty-ninth egg, she was found dead upon her nest.    From Wordnik.com.  [Unconscious Memory] Reference

The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the spring and summer till the end of August, as appears by my journals.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1] Reference

Just as the small horned owl, which reaches our shores a little in advance of the latter, is popularly known as the "woodcock owl," so also the wryneck, which comes to us about the same time as the first of the cuckoos, goes by the name of "cuckoo-leader.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Birds in the Calendar] Reference

All the swallow family are over, and here's the wryneck been playing a tune upon its comb all the morning; as for those sit-up-o'-night birds, they've been sing-sing, till I'm almost tired of it, and wish they would set to work and find something better to do.    From Wordnik.com.  [Featherland How the Birds lived at Greenlawn] Reference

Just as the countryfolk regard the wryneck as leader of the wandering cuckoos, and the short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks, so the ancients held that the landrail performed the same service of pioneer to the quail on its long journeys over land and sea.    From Wordnik.com.  [Birds in the Calendar] Reference

Raptors including lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni VU), short-toed eagle (Circaetus gallicus), long-legged buzzard (Buteo rufinus), and other birds such as quail (Coturnix coturnix), wryneck (Jynx torquilla), and scops owl (Otus scops) also use this ecoregion as a stopover.    From Wordnik.com.  [West Saharan montane xeric woodlands] Reference

Nico's wryneck, that knows how to draw a man even from overseas, and girls out of their wedding-chambers, chased with gold, carven out of translucent amethyst, lies before thee, Cyprian, for thine own possession, tied across the middle with a soft lock of purple lamb's wool, the gift of the sorceress of Larissa.    From Wordnik.com.  [Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology] Reference

Torfrida regretted the lengthening of the days, and the flowering of the primroses, and the return of the now needless wryneck; for they warned her that Hereward must forth again, to the wars in Scaldmariland, which had broken out again, as was to be expected, as soon as Count Robert and his bride had turned their backs.    From Wordnik.com.  [Hereward, the Last of the English] Reference

A wryneck did arrive and lived like a piece of snaking bracken for a couple of days along a stone wall near Greg’s house.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Year on the Wing] Reference

Their first excursion was right round the hill, down in the trench, and here there was plenty to have taken their attention for a day: there was an ant-hill, swarming with those great black ants found in the woods, whose hill looks one lightly shovelled-up collection of earth: then, close at hand, they heard the regular "tip-tap" of the great green woodpecker; the harsh "pee-pee-peen" of the wryneck; while, from far off, floating upon the soft breeze, came the sweet bell-tones of the cuckoo.    From Wordnik.com.  [Hollowdell Grange Holiday Hours in a Country Home] Reference

The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wryneck (so much resembling the hardy race of woodpeckers) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1] Reference

The keeper's cottage gave lunch and rest to the party, and the talk was either of ferrets, hares, and rabbits, or of the two rudely carpentered cases which contained well-set-up specimens of teal, cuckoo, wryneck, abnormally marked swallow, pied rat, landrail, and polecat, each being.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lines in Pleasant Places Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler] Reference

On the walls were hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up and down, wax images of men and women -- some with needles through their hearts, a cage full of bats, and glass jars containing spiders, frogs, leeches, beetles, scorpions, centipedes and other foul creatures; and lengthways down the room was stretched a short rope walk, used in a.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Bride of the Nile — Complete] Reference

On the walls were hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up and down, wax images of men and women -- some with needles through their hearts, a cage full of bats, and glass jars containing spiders, frogs, leeches, beetles, scorpions, centipedes and other foul creatures; and lengthways down the room was stretched a short rope walk, used in a Thracian form of magic.    From Wordnik.com.  [Complete Project Gutenberg Georg Ebers Works] Reference