- linnet Acanthis cannabina. This gregarious little bird has a number of different names. These may derive from its appearance, like rose lintie from the red breast of the male. Whin-lintie refers to its habitat, as it likes to nest among gorse bushes. The word lintie itself comes from the lint seeds on which it feeds and, in lintwhite, this is combined with an onomatopoeic representation of its alarm call. Samuel Smiles in Life of a Scotch Naturalist (1876) adds, for the confusion of the bird-watcher:
It is the rose lintie so long as it retains its red breast; but when that is gone or wanting, it is then the gray lintie, the whin lintie, the brown lintie, and so on.
The lintie is known for its song and singin like a lintie is a common simile and one used by Raymond Vettese in The Richt Noise (1988):
I'm gleg [lively] as a flech [flea], spinnin like a peerie [top], singin like a lintie an' oh, I canna weary.
To beat bushes for linties is to be employed on some useless or unprofitable task:
I'll be paid for my trouble. I dinna gang about beating bushes for linties
(Blackwood's Magazine October 1826)