March 29, 2005
Birds
“The birds were singing happily, causing the Sun to rise,” wrote some wannabe poet.
Insipid though it may be, it’s not necessarily so. Just because birds chirp doesn’t mean they’re all that happy.
A team of Dutch scientists with nothing better to do has found that some birds are bold, some are shy, with broad personality differences that have a genetic foundation. Birders could have told them that long ago, watching the blue jays bully everybody else and the hawkish doves betray their name.
Anyhow, they suspect the same is true of us humans. Whether we like the idea or not, our moods are probably programmed, and some of us are more DNAlert than others. Maybe St Francis was on to something, after all.