Linnet

Out walking Mollie today through the woods and this little fella came into view, singing his little heart out, so I couldn't resist snapping a few shots and I got one good one :) I had to go on my phone google to find out what it was !

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." A "cock linnet" features in the classic British music hall song of that period My Old Man, and as a character in Oscar Wilde's children's story The Devoted Friend. Wilde also mentions how the call of the linnet awakens The Selfish Giant to the one tree where it is springtime in his garden. William Butler Yeats evokes the image of the linnet in The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1890) in line 8: "And evening full of the linnet's wings."

"The Linnets" has become the nickname of King's Lynn Football Club, Burscough Football Club and Runcorn Linnets Football Club (formerly known as 'Runcorn F.C.' and Runcorn F.C. Halton). Barry Town F.C., the South Wales-based football team, also used to be nicknamed 'The Linnets'.