Twite

About the Twite

The twite (Linaria flavirostris) is a small brown passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. It is a partially migratory species that is found in a strongly disjunct distribution in northern Europe, and in Asian mountains from eastern Turkey to Nepal, western China and Mongolia. It mainly feeds on small seeds but occasionally also feeds on insects.

In 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus included the twite in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Fringilla flavirostris. The twite and the closely related linnets were at one time placed in the genus Carduelis but were moved to the resurrected genus Linaria based on a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences that was published in 2012. The genus had originally been described in 1802 by the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein. The genus name linaria is the Latin for a linen-weaver, from linum, "flax". The specific epithet flavirostris means "yellow-billed".

Nine subspecies are recognised: L. f. pipilans (Latham, 1787) – north Ireland and north Britain (syn. L. f. bensonorum) L. f. flavirostris (Linnaeus, 1758) – north Scandinavia and northwest Russia L... Wikipedia →