Did You Know? (Linnet)

That the Linnet is currently Red Listed in the UK?  The linnet is a small Old World finch that was common in the British Isles up until the 1970s, when changes in farming practices, and the use of herbicides to kill weeds, drastically reduced the Linnet’s food sources

The Linnet is about six inches long, has a rapid twittering song, and migrates in flocks across the British Isles sometimes going farther south in the winter. The male has a grey head with a crimson crown, and the female is plain brown. The English name, Linnet, comes from the Latin lin and linum, for linen, through the Middle French Linnette, because the bird feeds on flax seed. The scientific name, Carduelis cannabin, comes from the Latin carduelis—of the family of small finch-like birds, and cannabin—of the hemp seed—because the bird also feeds on hemp seeds.

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. 

An appropriate name for Greg Bover’s sailboat.  It is the same name his wife’s family always gave to their boats.

E.J. Lefavour

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