Me Ol' Cock Linnet

I got a great shot of my cock linnet sitting in a field maple the other day but chose to blip something else. I wasn't as close today but I was still delighted to see him and his lady. Numbers of these have dropped substantially, the UK population is estimated to have declined by 57% between 1970 and 2008. This member of the finch family has a melodious song and they were kept as cage birds in Victorian times. I didn't realise when I used to try and sing along with My Old Man Said Follow The Van that I was singing about a bird in a cage belonging to the evicted woman in the song.

I plunged my nose into the lilac (Extras) blooms, as I always do when they first open as their scent is heavenly. I recited these lines, which again is something I do every year.
"Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)"

I didn't know that they are from a very long poem, The Barrel Organ, by Alfred Noyes who wrote The Highwayman. It pleased me to discover that it includes these lines mentioning the linnet and tying my two pics nicely together. :)

"The Dorian nightingale is rare and yet they say you’ll hear him there 
    At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)
The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo 
    And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo, of owls that ogle London."