linnets

In order to entice the wild birds to alight amongst the nets, call birds are employed, of which there must be one or two of each of the different kinds which are expected to be caught, such as linnets, goldfinches, greenfinches, etc.

Practical Taxidermy A manual of instruction to the amateur in collecting, preserving, and setting up natural history specimens of all kinds. To which is added a chapter upon the pictorial arrangement of museums. With additional instructions in modelling and artistic taxidermy. Montagu Browne

Chased by rooks, and scattering meadow pipits and linnets in its wake, it bounded along on V-shaped wings, as if attached to the sky with loose elastic.

Birdwatch: Pallid harrier 2011

In the sycamores there was an uproar of linnets, sparrows triumphed, woodpeckers climbed along the chestnut trees, administering little pecks on the bark.

Les Miserables 2008

Larks, however, have seriously fallen in numbers as have linnets, another Brigidine songster.

Archive 2008-02-01 Jan 2008

Skylarks and linnets, which have inspired poets from Blake to Yeats, nest in the short grass and sand on their edges.

The Thistle and the Bee Shoumatoff, Alex 2008

It is probable that the linnets and tomtits of the last century gossiped a great deal about the chief justice.

Les Miserables 2008

There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches — I should think at least twenty.

Bleak House 2007

Red-polls, linnets, and even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange refuges for birds; but white mice were the favourite stock.

Reprinted Pieces 2007

What would be thought of a man who should seek to discover what had been the primitive cry of all animals; and how it happens that, after a series of ages, sheep bleat, cats mew, doves coo, linnets whistle?

A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

Republic and Empire your odes sound “like linnets in the pauses of the wind.”

Letters to Dead Authors 2006