THE cheekiness of your garden birds is down to nature rather than nurture. Some 60 per cent of the variation in temperament can be explained by their genes, say researchers who have bred great tits with extreme personalities.
Arie van Noordwijk and his team at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Heteren gave great tits new and strange objects to investigate, including a pink rubber panther, then rated the birds on their boldness using a 20-point scale. Next, they mated pairs of cocky birds and of shy birds and reared the offspring with foster parents. After four generations the cheekiness…
