European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - December 30, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Soucy accepts raptors lot what Hoy Are meal eaters in nature s scheme just like the oils at Burger King. Raptors Are truly remarkable animals. An owl can see a figh led match a Naff mile away. A Hawk iwo Miles up can see a Rabbit and know it s a Rabbit. They probably have he Besl eyesight in the whole  he Adolfes their efforts to try and adapt to a world not of nature s making. For study he s trapped a snowy owl underneath the Wing of a concorde it parked at Kennedy Airport. As Soucy s rep Pajion spread so did the cages out Back. But he s a realist. He will not turn away a tearful youngster who shows up with a baby Phocbe that has fallen at i of the Nesi. By his Eye cannot be on every Sparrow. Obviously there Are Jimis he and Diane Learned As they went along designing cages and treating the patients so As riot of make permanent welfare cases of their ailing lock. There Are triumphs. In 19b2, which happened Lobo tha National year of the Bald Eagle one of them foil out of the sky. Ii ended up Here i look it to Bill Hobby a local vet and he got an in into the bird.1 he found it had too much Mercury in its blood. Six weeks later we few him  to Chesapeake Bay in a donated Lear Jet with an no Civ Crew and returned a healthy Eagle to he  in time the big Birds began running into big Money it costs $175 to air freight a recovered Osprey Down to Florida Aller migrating season i be shipped ice ruinous Hawks to Arizona. When it looked like Diane was going Down a a Heap and i Couin l a lord it any More a Friend said to should  they Are now the Raptor Trust eligible Lor tax exempt donations a local lumber company donates Wood Lor cages. At to which has huge office complexes in the area gave $7,000 Lor a new Cage. In the summer the Skucys have line Lull Lime staffers and 25 volunteers. The Hobby has become one of the 10 biggest Bird recovery operations in the nation. We Oak a five Day Scalion this year. She first in 6 years. 1 hired Jean Stamy. An sex teacher to show school Leonard Soucy helps a Seagull with a broken lag recuperate at the Raptor Trust. Groups around. 1 told her she d work harder and be paid less in she came to me i kept my Promise. The reality is How big can to gel we Don t charge Tor our services whom do you Send a Bill to so we have to beg. That s what i be become. A beggar.". Soucy has raised $185,000 to buy the properly next door Tor More space and an educational Center to make a hard sell a Little easier. I like to think we re setting an example. In the Las so years americans have gone Back to being More. Intolerant of nature gone Back to their computers and porsche. Ii they had More sympathy for the planet Hal sustains us maybe they would t Puko on their world so much. I figure i be put 100,000 hours into att this and i be never Laken a dime  said Soucy strolling among the cages under the penetrating stare of his patients Miria the Golden Eagle a permanent resident eyed him dispassionately. Three snowy owls watched . A clutch of great horned owls As stately As supreme court justices in a group portrait perched motionless on a dead limb. Their thoughts about Leonard Soucy i any we a inscrutable. His weren t. I be thought weekly i d tinally give it up. Maybe something died you d worked hard Over. Twenty years. I be been Oul in the Back Yard pulling broken Birds Back together. Where did All Hal time go he stared Back at the owls. I Don t think i would do it All Over  he reconsidered. I Don t  he brightened. But i be probably Gol More god bless you s in my life than most  res surprisingly adept showing that pigeons can distinguish among Al least Lour categories of objects and he said probably vastly. More than that to also found no differ Ertice in a Pigeon s ability to distinguish natural objects like Lowers and artificial 1 ones Liko chairs in this. His finding differed from that of Hornslein who Fol suggested Hal pigeons were better Able to recognize categories Lor natural objects rather than artificial ones. The Dill rence in our results is probably the result of some variation in experimental technique Wasserman said. Or. Herbert s. Terrace a psychologist at Columbia University who conducts conceptualization experiments with pigeons and chimpanzees said All such 1. Experiments have failed to stello a major controversy. The big question is what the Pigeon really sees when it is presented with these two dimensional. Images Terrace said. Whether or not it can make the. Connection Between an image and reality is a question Hal remains unanswered and not much work is being ,9 done to answer it.". Critics of All experiments of this Typo contend that no Experiment can demonstrate unequivocally thai an j animal associates the image of an object with the real thing. However persuasive the evidence May seem. Wassom unacknowledged Noone can get inside a Pigeon  3 the four categories Wasserman s group used in the experiments which were recently reported in the journal of experimental psychology wore cats or in some cases human being chairs automobiles and Lowers. V objects were shown from different perspectives unaltered lighting or settings and some lanes partially hidden in one lest 500 slides from each category were mined. In random order and shown to pigeons. Ten images irom each category were repeatedly flashed on Tho screen until the subjects had Learned to classify them correctly. The remaining slides wore then presented Wilh no repetitions. If a Pigeon pecked the key corresponding to the Correct category it was rewarded otherwise the next slide was presented Wasserman said the Birds achieved an accuracy rate of about 70 percent in this lest since random pecking Al the keys would have yielded a score of about 25 percent he regards the result As highly significant. A s not just a matter of Rote learning he said. Experiments of this kind Wasserman believes May shed Light on one of the principal debates in behavioural psychology whether animals including pigeons and human beings conceptualize categories of things in terms of average prototypes or by reference to a huge pigeons demonstrated the ability to sort object end photographs into logical categories. Lilc of similar stored images referred Loas exemplars our experiments have nol settled the debate he said but i think the evidence is growing Hathe Richer a memory is in stored images Iho More capable in is of distinguishing categories. 1 eel the exemplar explanation is probably closest Lotha  the main Loo in Wasserman s experiments is the Skinner Box a device named for . Skinner the trailblazing psychologist who demonstrated in the 1930s and 1940s that behaviour can to modified in Complex ways by reinforcing desired behaviour with judicious. Rewards. Among Skinner s achievements was leaching pigeons to play taboo Tennis Tho variant of the device invented by Wasserman and his group is a Box about the size of a microwave oven with a 3 Inch Square frosted Glass projection screen at one end.  a slide projector controlled by a computer is mounted outside the Box and projects images on the screen near each Corner of Iho screen Are four round keys each a different color. Behind each of the keys and the projection screen is a sensitive electrical switch