By Harry Britton, Project Officer, Shetland

Please email any sightings of ringed-twites to harry.britton@rspb.org.uk. Include the date of the sighting, the location and any pictures. Feel free to contact Harry if you have any further questions.
In order to tackle the decline of Shetland’s Linties (Twites), we need to learn more about them so we can ensure we are taking the best action possible to ensure their continued presence in Shetland. Do they have a preference of seed mix? How are they moving between the crops? Where are these Linties going? We can make educated assumptions, but without collecting concrete data, we cannot suggest the most effective way of conserving the species. To answer these questions, we have begun a colour ringing project.
To colour ring, we are visiting these different crops across the islands, and catching the birds in nets. Once they are caught, we put a unique colour combination on them – a bit like naming them – with no two birds having the same combination. We then gather extra data like their age, wing length, how much fat and muscle they have on them and their weight. Then, after a quick processing time, the bird is then released.
Here’s the important part – and where you can get involved whether you are a landowner or not. We need sightings! And this isn’t just limited to Shetland, as some Twite have been known to move between Shetland and Orkney, and then Orkney to the mainland. It would be quite hard to see the colour rings through binoculars, so if you are an enthusiastic photographer then please target your lens to the next Lintie you see!
There are four rings on a bird. One is a standard metal ring that any ringed bird will have, and then there will be three rings with colours on them, either brown, white, black, fluorescent orange, lilac or light blue. Our Linties will have the metal ring on their right leg.
