Twite

The twite is a small brown finch, similar in size and shape to a linnet at 13–13.5 cm long. It is brown streaked with black above, with a pink rump in adult males and a brown rump in immatures and females, and buff to whitish underparts streaked with brown; it lacks the red head patch and breast of the linnet and redpolls. The conical bill is yellow in winter and grey in summer (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is a partially migratory species found in a strongly disjunct distribution in northern Europe and in Asian mountains from eastern Turkey to Nepal, western China and Mongolia. The call is a very distinctive nasal twaa-it, from which its name derives, and the song has fast trills and twitters. The female builds a nest on the ground or low in a bush and lays three to six eggs. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a resident of alpine and cold desert that eats plants and seeds, with a Restricted range of about 39,700 km² and insufficient data on trends (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).