Ronnie Blackwell

Here is the evidence that I do sometimes go birding—a Mississippi Gulf Coast Audubon Field Trip to Spence’s Woods and Logtown. Grayson Rayborn is not in the picture because he’s taking it!

There are great birding events this month along the Northern Gulf Coast. Here are some links.

Dauphin Island is one the premier birding spots in North America. Join the parade of birding clubs, tours, Big Year counters, and people who just like to look at birds. See you at Shell Mound!

The Wilson Ornithological Society and the Association of Field Ornithologist are having a Joint National Meeting in Mobile right at the peak of spring migration, what a coincidence!

The Pascagoula River Nature Festival will have events scattered throughout the month of April.

In Louisiana the Grand Isle Migratory Bird Festival will take place from April 18—20.

April 11—13 Mandeville’s Northlake Nature Center is hosting the Great Louisiana Birdfest.

Right across the river from the guys in the Logtown picutre lies Honey Island. Pines Woods Audubon Field Trip, March 22, 2008 Some innocent passer-by took this picture.

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The Eurasian Wryneck, jynx torquilla Photo by MrClementi

The Biloxi Sun Herald is running a series of three of my columns on jinx birds. You know—those sneaky birds who seem to taunt you, call from the bushes, flash across a gap in the undergrowth, but never give you a decent look at them. If you have missed the jinx columns in the paper, just click on my Sun Herald tab above. I hope you have as much fun reading as I had writing them.

When I started writing about these birds I got curious about the word jinx. I went to a couple of lexicographer sites and found out that I wasn’t the only one who was curious. There seems to be several word-wars going on among word experts about this small word, jinx.

But I was really surprised when I found out that most of the fuss is about how the word is spelled. Someone explained to us nonpartisans who had stumbled onto the battlefield that the problem is where did the ‘I’ come from? Everybody knows that a Jynx is a bird.

Oh, do they?

I left those guys squabbling and found my self in more familiar territory at the European bird sites. Jynx is the latin name for the Eurasian Wryneck, a truly strange bird that is sort of a woodpecker who doesn’t peck wood. The wryneck has a long tongue like a woodpecker and slurps up insects with it like a woodpecker, and it even nests in woodpecker holes, but it is incapable of pecking wood into holes on its own.

But it does have some interesting qualities, such as the ability to turn it’s head 180 degrees and hiss like a snake. These characteristics brought the jynx notoriety long before Billy Friedkin taught Linda Blair the same tricks and won an Oscar for the deed.

Throughout its range from Europe into Africa, the wrynecks has been prized by local spell-casters since before Hector was a pup—literally! In Greece and Rome wryneck feathers were considered such necessary ingredients for any magic potion that the potions themselves became known as jynxes. And now you know….

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