Birds: Common Linnet
For most of my birdwatching life, I simply called them House Finches. The book, Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner, however, added the moniker Linnet to my vocabulary and set the record straight on my naming lexicon. The species is placed in the genus Linaria and the genus name linaria is the Latin for a linen-weaver, from linum, “flax.” The species name cannabina comes from the Latin for hemp. The English name Linnet has a similar root and originated from Old French linette, from lin, “flax.” [1]
Male Linnet (Linaria cannabina) on rose bush
The linnet derives both its common name and its scientific name, Linaria, from its fondness for hemp seeds and flax seeds — flax being the English name of the plant from which woven linen is made. Not that the bird likes hemp plants and achieves an avian high, but rather its beak is uniquely wide and sharp to open the hemp seeds when the are their fruitful most nutritious to birds.
The Eight Steps in Linen Production
Linnet: House Finch
A small and slim finch with a long tail, the Linnet has a territory that’s widespread. The bird was once very popular as a caged bird, because of its tuneful song full of fast trills and twitters. Males are marked with crimson foreheads and chests which become brighter during breeding seasons. Females are much browner than their male counterparts with only a hint of red on their breasts. It has a bouncing flight, usually twittering as it flies. During the winter months the birds may be seen in large flocks.
The common linnet feeds on the ground, and low down in bushes. Its food mainly consisting of seeds, which it eats and also feeds to its chicks. Linnets like to eat small to medium-sized seeds from most arable weeds (knockgrass, dock) crucifers (such as charlock, shepherd’s purse) chickweeds, dandilions, thistle, mayweed, hawthorn and birch. Linnets also have a small percentage of invertibrates in their diet.
Disasterously, despite the large variety of seeds in its diet, the number of Linnets has dropped significantly over the past few decades, with the UK population estimated to have fallen by more than half (57% decline) between 1970 and 2014. The latest Breeding Bird Survey results show a similar decrease in all countries, including the US. Birders have deduced that population declines can be attributed to increasing use of herbicides, aggressive scrub removal and excessive hedge trimming.
Female Linnet on blooming witches broom
This bird name is more ubiquitous that I thought. Upon research it has been in poems, novels and essays. Writers Tennyson, Wilde, Yates, Blake, Wordsworth and Dickens all have references to this bird species in their writing. Linnets are even in the musicals on Broadway: take Sondheim’s lyrics in Sweeney Todd. The musical 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?
In Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Morns like these—we parted—”, the last line is: “And this linnet flew!”
Henry E. Hooper 