While clearly closely related to the Linnet, the Twite often looks more like a Redpoll with its warm buffy brown colour and pale wingbar.

In some ways the Twite seems to lie half way between the Linnet and the Redpoll, but it is most closely allied to the Linnet. A bird of low vegetation or the ground, it is even more terrestrial than the Linnet. It breeds in more northerly or higher regions, where it is associated with upland farms and coastal crofts; it frequents saltmarsh in winter.