THE VISUAL WORLD 



In our study of avian perception we are in much the same position as 

 the blind men examining the elephant. The whole of the truth cannot be 

 understood by study, however careful and complete, of the parts. To the 

 laboratory student studying the releaser mechanisms, the breadth of per- 

 ception of birds seems very limited indeed, whereas to the field observer 

 the birds' familiar response to the whole of the wide visual field may be 

 overwhelmingly impressive. What we must do is to continue the controlled 

 studies of isolated parts of the visual world. Controlled studies of social re- 

 lations have developed rather widely during the past twenty years; but it 

 has not been until recently, as in the pioneering studies of Kramer ( 1951, 

 1952) and Matthews (1951a, b; 1952), that responses to individual compo- 

 nents of the physical environment have been examined. And then, along 

 with these controlled experiments, we must surely carry on with more field 

 studies, like those of Griffin ( 1952a, b ) , who watched the behavior of free- 

 flying experimental birds from an aircraft, and with more field work like 

 that of L. Tinbergen (1941), Deelder (1949), the Lacks (1949), Svardson 

 (1953), and others who study the behavior of wild birds in the very act of 

 traveling cross-country from one place to another. 



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