  Oscillatory instabilities in Hamiltonian anharmonic lattices are known to
appear through Hamiltonian Hopf bifurcations of certain time-periodic solutions
of multibreather type. Here, we analyze the basic mechanisms for this scenario
by considering the simplest possible model system of this kind where they
appear: the three-site discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger model with periodic
boundary conditions. The stationary solution having equal amplitude and
opposite phases on two sites and zero amplitude on the third is known to be
unstable for an interval of intermediate amplitudes. We numerically analyze the
nature of the two bifurcations leading to this instability and find them to be
of two different types. Close to the lower-amplitude threshold stable
two-frequency quasiperiodic solutions exist surrounding the unstable stationary
solution, and the dynamics remains trapped around the latter so that in
particular the amplitude of the originally unexcited site remains small. By
contrast, close to the higher-amplitude threshold all two-frequency
quasiperiodic solutions are detached from the unstable stationary solution, and
the resulting dynamics is of 'population-inversion' type involving also the
originally unexcited site.
