The wryneck belongs to the woodpecker family but breaks most of the family's habits. It has soft tail feathers rather than stiff props, does not chisel wood, and takes existing cavities including nest boxes. Its plumage is a fine grey-brown bark pattern that makes a perched bird almost invisible.
The defensive display is its signature. A cornered adult or nestling extends and rotates the neck, erects the crown feathers, hisses and writhes. Predators inspecting a dark cavity meet something that moves and sounds like a snake, and the display appears to work by exploiting that expectation rather than by mimicking any single species.
Diet is dominated by ants and their pupae, gathered from the ground with a long sticky tongue. The genus name Jynx passed into English as jinx through the bird's historical use in love charms, in which a wryneck was bound to a spinning wheel. Whether the display genuinely deters mammalian predators, or mainly startles them, has not been tested rigorously.