Lovely Linnets
Try to imagine what sort of conversation is unfolding the next time you hear a pair of Linnets calling!
Dominic Couzens on why it’s important to listen for the Linnet
It’s surprising what gems can be found deep within the thicket of ornithological verbiage. There’s something absolutely enchanting, hidden within a long section about Linnet vocalisations in the famously detailed Birds of the Western Palearctic: These birds will utter a “Slightly descending ‘cuv’, by pair in antiphonal duet with regular pauses, in long series up to 40 minutes.”
Readers, this is seriously romantic stuff. Roughly translated, it means that, during the breeding season, male and female Linnets will natter sweet nothings to each other in periods of blissful idleness lasting longer than half an hour. Notice, one bird is commenting and the other immediately answering, which is what antiphonal means. It’s the avian equivalent of pillow-talk. One Linnet, perched on a gorse bush says: “Tasty Charlock seeds this morning,” and the partner replies from a nearby bramble: “It went down well with the Shepherd’s Purse.” After a gentle pause, another begins: “Home-schooling the chicks is a pain…” and so on.
In all seriousness, few people appreciate just how complicated bird vocalisations are. We all know that small birds have songs, and they utter one or two contact calls and an alarm call. But the extent of their vocabulary is often much more expansive. This is true especially of the quiet and subtle conversation within the private world of the family. The Linnet is just one example of a bird with multiple calls.
This miniature, restless, seed-eating sprite has something to say in many of the moments of life. For example, it has a specific call made when the nest is threatened, and both sexes produce calls to indicate anxiety from an unspecified source. Linnets have a specific ground predator call.
When young are in the nest, the male indicates that food is approaching, and when the young fledge, there is a call to summon them and another to warn them of immediate danger. The adults, meanwhile, have pair-to-pair contact calls and courtship calls.
Despite this amazing diversity, the chances are that most birdwatchers have never heard many of these signals, or perhaps any of them. There is much to learn about the intimacies of bird pairs. DNA studies have discovered much about battles between the sexes, and sperm competition, but the intricacies of what must be very intense relationships during the nesting period are poorly known. If you add the comparatively recent understanding of individual personality traits in birds, then there are likely to be many revelations to come.
Lack of aggression
One of the characteristics of the Linnet as a species, though, is how comparatively ‘chilled’ its breeding season is. In contrast to the struggles of many a songbird, there is a surprising lack of aggression between individuals and pairs. Quite the reverse; pairs frequently nest in relatively close proximity to each other, in the same bush or a neighbouring one.
In these situations, males, which provide most of the food for the young in the latter’s first few days of life, will sometimes set out together on foraging trips and look for food sources together. They give the appearance of being colleagues rather than rivals. At the same time, many other birds, from tits to Robins, are at each other’s throats.
Linnets hardly hold territories at all, and the males’ songs are only geared towards mate attraction. Pairs form in the non-breeding flock, and so, not surprisingly, the song can be heard at almost any time of year. Personally, I was delighted to hear one only last week (mid-January), lifting the almost unrelenting gloom of Britain in early 2021.
Throughout its range, the Linnet is famous for its song, so much so that it was once frequently kept as a cagebird. The song is a rambling medley of great lightness and sweetness, but with a definite whiff of incoherence that has given rise to an expression in French. To have a ‘tête de linotte’ is, roughly translated, to be something of an airhead.
Linnets were also kept for their colourful plumage, and in the breeding season the males are lovely, with varying amounts of intense crimson on the breast and forehead. Red in a bird’s plumage is usually a sign of hard chemical work inside. Neither red nor yellow are naturally produced as part of a
bird’s physiological processes, so these colours must be synthesised from chemicals taken in the diet, usually in certain types of seeds.
The ability to create lots of colour is related to a bird’s general health, so the brightness and extent of that strawberry sauce is a good indication of a male’s fitness (there is a metabolic cost to creating red, so if a bird can afford this optional extra while carrying on life as normal, it is a telling sign.)
Interestingly, the colour is more an indication of a bird’s autumnal fitness than breeding fitness, because the red coloration is deposited during the bird’s very long moulting season, which seems to last most of the summer.
The tips of the fresh feathers are dull, and it is only wear and tear that shears off the extremities of the feathers, revealing, bit by bit, the colourful interior. This explains why Linnets are so often disappointing to look at, especially when an excited birder contemplates a painting or photograph of the world-beating breeding male. For much of the year Linnets are quite dull and difficult, and even in the breeding season, the amount of red varies over time and from individual to individual.
Eat what they are given
Linnets, in common with other finches, are professional seed-eaters, consuming seeds all year round. Where they differ from most of their relatives, however, is in eschewing insects almost completely. Although a few early studies suggested that they take invertebrates in spring, the more recent work strongly implies that this is only exceptional.
The other species you might name, such as Chaffinches, Greenfinches and even Hawfinch add lots of insects to their spring diets, including feeding these to their young, for the extra protein. But not Linnets – the young get seed regurgitant, which has passed through the male’s gut and the female’s bill. In contrast to human children, they eat exactly what they are given.
The merest glance at a Linnet’s bill not only identifies it – the bill is much shorter than that of a Goldfinch, say, or Greenfinch or Chaffinch – but also gives a substantial clue as to the types of seeds eaten. The more you look at a Linnet, the more you realise how reduced the bill is, and how tiny are its favoured seeds.
Various studies have been done on Linnet diet, and although this finch takes the seeds of as many as 75 species of plants, only five or six will be favoured in each locality and make up the bulk of the diet. Among these are nettles, docks, chickweed, dandelions and Cat’s-ear. Many of these seeds are taken on the ground, or when the birds are clinging to herbs. You almost never see Linnets on bird feeders or foraging up in the trees.
Such plants favoured by Linnets, you might notice, are among the unloved and unappreciated of Britain’s flora, forever condemned as ‘weeds’. Such plants are also the ones that are assailed with all manner of herbicides on Britain’s farmland, as well as being swept away in the cleanliness war waged by council sprays and garden plastic.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Linnet has suffered in the British countryside, with a 54% reduction in population between 1970 and 1998. It is officially Red Listed as a Species of Conservation Concern. Although its decline has levelled off, it is difficult to see how its fortunes might improve unless farmers move wholesale into wildlifefriendly practices.
Until then, the pillow talk of the Linnet might sound like this: “The feeding around here is not what it was,” says the first. “I worry about the kids,” replies the second.
THE ABILITY TO CREATE LOTS OF COLOUR IS RELATED TO A BIRD’S GENERAL HEALTH, SO THE BRIGHTNESS AND EXTENT OF THAT STRAWBERRY SAUCE IS A GOOD INDICATION OF A MALE’S FITNESS