Linnet

For the North American bird, see House Finch

Linnet
male
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Fringillidae
Genus:	Carduelis
Species:	C. cannabina
Binomial name
Carduelis cannabina (Linnaeus, 1758)

The Linnet (Carduelis cannabina) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae.

The Linnet derives its scientific name from its fondness for hemp and its English name from its liking for seeds of flax, from which linen is made.

Description

It is a slim bird with a long tail. The upperparts are brown, the throat is sullied white and the bill is grey. The summer male has a grey nape, red head patch and red breast.

Females and young birds lack the red and have white underparts with the breast streaked buff. The Linnet's pleasant song contains fast trills and twitters.

Distribution

This bird breeds in Europe, western Asia and north Africa. It is partially resident, but many eastern and northern birds migrate further south in the breeding range or move to the coasts.

They are sometimes found several hundred miles at sea[1].

Behaviour

Open land with thick bushes is favoured for breeding, including heathland and garden. It builds its nest in a bush, laying 4-7 eggs.

This species can form large flocks outside the breeding season, sometimes mixed with other finches, such as Twite, on coasts and salt marshes. Its food mainly consists of seeds, which it also feeds to its chicks.

They feed on the ground, and low down in bushes.

They like small to medium sized seeds: most arable weeds, Polygonums (Knotgrass, dock), Crucifers (Charlock, shepherds purse Capsella bursa-pastoris), Chickweeds Stellaria, Dandelions, Thistle, Sow-thistle, Mayweed, Common groundsel, Common Hawthorn, Birch.

They have a small component of Invertebrates in their diet.

Conservation

The Linnet is listed by the UK Biodiversity Action Plan as a priority species, which can be found here.It is protected in the UK by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

In Britain, populations are declining, attributed to increasing use of herbicides, aggressive scrub removal and excessive hedge trimming; its population fell by 56% between 1968 to 1991. This was probably due to decrease in seed supply and increasing use of herbicide being two of the factors.

More worringly, during the 1980-2009 period, its European population decreased by 62% according to the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme^[1]

Favourable management practices on agricultural land:

• Set-aside
• Overwinter Stubbles
• Uncultivated margins, ditches, field corners
• Conservation headlands
• Wild bird cover of species that produce small, oil-rich seeds such as Kale, Quinoa, Mustard plant, Oil-seed rape Brassica napus
• Restoration and creation of hay meadows
• Short, thick, thorny hedgerows and scrub for nesting habitat
• Restoration of meadows

Cultural references

The bird was a popular pet in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Tennyson mentions "the linnet born within the cage" in part 27 of the poem In Memoriam A.H.H, the same section that contains the famous lines "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." A "cock linnet" features in the classic British music hall song of that period My Old Man, and as a character in Oscar Wilde's children's story The Devoted Friend. Wilde also mentions how the call of the linnet awakens The Selfish Giant to the one tree where it is springtime in his garden. William Butler Yeats evokes the image of the linnet in The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1890) in line 8: "And evening full of the linnet's wings."

"The Linnets" has become the nickname of King's Lynn Football Club, Burscough Football Club and Runcorn Linnets Football Club (formerly known as 'Runcorn F.C.' and Runcorn F.C. Halton). Barry Town F.C., the South Wales-based football team, also used to be nicknamed 'The Linnets'.

William Wordsworth argued that the song of the Linnet provides more wisdom than books in the third verse of The Tables Turned:

"Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There's more of wisdom in it."

But the fellow English poet Robert Bridges used the Linnet instead to express the limitations of poetry - concentrating on the difficulty in poetry of conveying the beauty of a bird's song. He wrote in the first verse:

"I heard a linnet courting

His lady in the spring:

His mates were idly sporting,

Nor stayed to hear him sing

His song of love.--

I fear my speech distorting

His tender love."

The musical Sweeney Todd features the song "Green Finch and Linnet Bird," in which a young lady confined to her room wonders why caged birds sing:

"Green finch and linnet bird,

Nightingale, blackbird,

How is it you sing?

How can you jubilate,

Sitting in cages,

Never taking wing?"

Phylogeny

It has been obtained by Antonio Arnaiz-Villena et al.^[2][3]

Gallery

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  Carduelis cannabina

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  Young in nest

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References

1. ^ http://www.birdlife.org/community/2011/08/farmland-birds-in-europe-fall-to-lowest-levels/
2. ^ Arnaiz-Villena, Antonio; Alvarez-Tejado M., Ruiz-del-Valle V., García-de-la-Torre C., Varela P, Recio M. J., Ferre S., Martinez-Laso J. (1998). "Phylogeny and rapid Northern and Southern Hemisphere speciation of goldfinches during the Miocene and Pliocene Epochs". Cell.Mol.Life.Sci. 54(9):: 1031–41. http://www.springerlink.com/content/r1ukblmke5d3uy1v/fulltext.pdf. 
3. ^ Zamora, J; Moscoso J, Ruiz-del-Valle V, Ernesto L, Serrano-Vela JI, Ira-Cachafeiro J, Arnaiz-Villena A (2006). "Conjoint mitochondrial phylogenetic trees for canaries Serinus spp. and goldfinches Carduelis spp. show several specific polytomies". Ardeola 53: 1–17. http://www.ardeola.org/files/1260.pdf. 

• BirdLife International (2004). Carduelis cannabina. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
• Ageing and sexing (PDF) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta
• RSPB A management guide to birds of lowland farmland

External links

• Avibase
• ARChive Videos, stills
• BBC Wildlifefinder BBC videos, sound files and information programmes featuring Linnets