See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/351912522

Performance Analysis of Bird Counting Techniques Using Digital Photograph

Conference Paper · May 2021

DOI: 10.1109/ICICCS51141.2021.9432265

CITATION READS

1 230

6 authors, including:

Spoorthy K M Vijetha Nrupathunga

Siddaganga Institute of Technology Siddaganga Institute of Technology
1 PUBLICATION   1 CITATION    1 PUBLICATION   1 CITATION   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Keerthan Kumar T G Sushma Sa

National Institute of Technology Karnataka National Institute of Karnataka
17 PUBLICATIONS   90 CITATIONS    6 PUBLICATIONS   12 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Automated Agricultural FieldAnalysis and Monitoring System Using IOT View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Keerthan Kumar T G on 15 July 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2

Performance Analysis of Bird Counting Techniques Using

Digital Photograph
Ms. Spoorthy K M[1], Ms. Suchetha G Hegde[2], Ms. Vijetha N[3],
Under Graduate Scholars, Department of Information Science & Engg,
Siddaganga Institute of Technology-Tumakuru-572103.

Dr. M S Rudramurthy[4],
Associate Professor, Department of Information Science & Engineering
Siddaganga Institute of Technology, Tumakuru-572103

Mr. Keerthan Kumar TG[5], Mrs. Sushma S A[6]

Assistant Professor, Department of Information Science and Engineering,
Siddaganga Institute of Technology, Tumakuru-572103

Abstract: Counting birds using digital photography is
an attractive method. There are different methods of
counting objects suitable to both offline and online real
time situations. This research work has carried out a
performance analysis of various methods utilized for bird
census. This work is necessary to overcome some of the
limitations of bird counting techniques that uses digital
photography. It requires the study of existing techniques
for object counting in a given digital photograph and to
suggest some methods to overcome one or more
limitations faced in traditional techniques.
Counting techniques are most significant in various
arenas of science and technology. The efficiency of
manual counting drops with the increase in the number of
objects. Counting bird using digital photography is most
attractive, simple and less expensive. The manual
counting techniques is the basic method. This method is
not efficient as it human errors due to the involvement of
human individuals and also not suitable for large flock of
birds as human individual may miss some birds or recount
the same bird. The proposed research work has explored
new possibilities to overcome from the said problem by
the application of the techniques such as contouring,
thresholding, template matching, and counting objects.
The results obtained from these studies are attractive and
showed significant improvement over manual method of
carrying out census of birds using digital photography.
Keywords: Bird counting, Thresholding, ImageJ,
Template matching, Contouring, Artificial intelligence,
Image Processing.
I. INTRODUCTION
The use of artificial intelligence and machine vision
techniques to solve problems is gaining importance in
most areas of science and engineering applications. One
significant challenge in most areas of science and
engineering is counting objects in digital photographs.
Counting problems is the estimation of the number of
objects in a still image or a video frame. Counting
instances of objects in crowded scenes is a tedious task,
frequently encountered in biology, remote sensing and
surveillance data analysis.
A. Objectives
The Counting of each bird is an inspiring and difficult
task, as it can be difficult to count them manually. The
increase in population of birds is a strong marker that
shows fluctuation in the levels of pollution, variation in
climate, loss of habitat, relocation timing, and another
factor. There have been huge efforts to gather bird census
data; Annual events like the “Great Backyard Bird Count,
the Christmas Bird Count, Project Feeder Watch, and the
Big Garden Bird watch” are various bird census
projects.Accepting our environment is of paramount
significance during the period of fast urbanization, global
warming, climate change and increased pollution levels.
Birds are crucial for the proper functioning of Earth’s
biodiversity, as they play an vital part in the food chain.
Study of the bird's population and their behavior provides
us some cues to understand our environment. The
protection and preservation of birds and other biological
species in this universe is essential and significantly
important. New studies have shown that the living
species in the world impacted due to Global warming,
climate change, rise in pollution etc.
B. Problem Specification
Counting one of the important operations in the field
of medical, scientific, agriculture, factory i.e., it may be
the count of cells, fruits, people, industrial products,
sanctuaries. Our project concentrates to overcome this
problem by using various methods for counting. It would
be easy to get the census with a better method that gets
the more accurate results in counting. Manual work will
be reduced hence to do so, digital cameras are installed in
the areas which get the images. So by implementing these
methods, it will be easy to obtain the object count. Some
of the methods of counting objects are,Image
Processing,Morphological Characteristics,Edge and
Contour Detection,Template Matching,Converting the
Object to Dots and Counting,Objects Counting by
Estimating a Density Map using Convolutional Neural

978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE 1482

 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2
Networks.For now we have considered birds as the object
of interest as the bird census plays an important role in
gauging the pollution, environmental changes.Many
surveys are done to count the number of birds .The survey
was done by BIRD COUNT INDIA according to them
Nearly 12,000 lists from almost 1,500 birders clocking up
close to 8,000 hours birding and recording an impressive
825 species. The survey done by the state of Canada’s
birds 2019. They are more concentrated towards which
species is making development in the population and
which species are reducing so that they can take
precautions to save the bird.
In our project we try to analyze the different methods
that can be used for counting. We also discuss the
circumstances we have to use which method.
We have implemented three methods,
1. Thresholding
2. Template matching
3. Contour object counting
From our project it will be useful to use the best
method among them looking at different circumstances.
F. Challenges for estimating birds:
The Factors affecting the estimation of birds involves
depends on the situation. Assume the background of the
image is similar bird color, then it’s very tough to
estimate the number of birds present. It also depends on
• The thickness of the flock
• The distance between the source (camera) and
the target flock of birds.
• Bird size.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
During the period of rapid urbanization, climate
change and increasing global warming, it is
paramount important to carryout census of migratory
birds in our bird sanctuaries and to carryout analysis
of the results obtained over a period of time. As birds
play a significant role of our Earth’s biodiversity, the
study of population through bird census provides us
some cues to better understand our planet and its
environment. Recent studies have shown that the living
species on the universe impacted due to Global warming,
climate change, rise in pollution etc. This can be
manifested by the study of population of birds and other
biological species of the universe. According to the
National Audubon Society (NAS), bird populations may
be facing serious threats and declines due to global
warming and climate change (Nijhuis, 2014)[1].
Traditional technique of bird counting or bird census
involves human volunteers to count or to carryout census
of birds manually. The volunteers generally underestimate
the size of large flock of birds and overestimate the size
of small groups [2]. Glimer et al, showed the use of aerial
photographs taken from the plane for manual counting of
birds [3]. The application of computer-aided procedure
for counting waterfowl on aerial photographs was studied
[4]. Later, application of different image processing
techniques to facilitate bird census was studied [5]. The
first book on Bird Census Techniques was published by
978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
Bibby, C.J. et al[6]. In the case of winter starling roost
site, the use of digital photograph of large concentrations
of passerines was studied by Juan M Perez-Garcia in[7].
Joseph M. Wunderle, Jr. at the United States Department
of Agriculture in the division of Forest service has
considered different census methods for Caribbean Land
Birds.
Barbedo et al [8] reviewed methods for Automatic
Counting of Objects in Digital Images. The techniques
presented are as follows.
Morphological Operations: Morphology is a huge set of
image processing operations based on the following:
● Dilation: The morphological operation dilation
expands the edges of the object in the image by
adding pixels according to the structuring of
elements.
● Closing: The closing operation consists in a
dilation followed by erosion, using the same
structuring element.
● Opening: The opening operation is the dual
operation of closing, consisting of an erosion
followed by dilation, using the same structuring
element.
● Hole filling: it is not usually classified as a
morphological operation, hole filling acts over
the morphological characteristics of the image by
removing parasitic holes that may arise from
other operations such as thresholding.
Filtering: The filtering is the process of convolving a
kernel with an image. This operation will serve one of
three main objectives:
i) Smoothing means removal or reduction of noise
ii) Sharpening means improving contrast between
contiguous regions.
iii) Directional emphasis means aiming to highlight
objects and structures with a certain spatial orientation.
Contrast Enhancement: Techniques to improve contrast
goal to improve the distinction between the rest of the
scene and required objects. This section consists of three
techniques.
Morphological Characteristics: The objects which have
small differences can be counted using morphological
characteristics. The different morphological
characteristics are as follows
● Transform means the other mathematical
representation of an image, created from the
traditional representation as a function of two
spatial variables.
● Hough Transform: Ballard proposed the
generalized Hough transform that can detect any
arbitrary shape. Transform has several necessary
characteristics like it can be able to recognize
partially deformed shapes as well as highly
deformed shapes.
Edge and Contour Detection:
1483
 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2
The main objective in object counting is to find the
limits between the objects of interest and their
surroundings. On the other hand, edges are made of pixels
with derived values that exceed a certain threshold, that
is, its existence is based on a measurement for the
discontinuity of the grayscale. The edge points which will
be connected into edge segments, which in turn may be
connected in such a way they correspond to contours, but
this will be not the case.
Segmentation and Classification Techniques: This
technique will aim to segment images in order to
discriminate between objects of interest and the remainder
of the scene. In the case of classification techniques,
besides segmenting, it is also necessary to label regions,
which is necessary when multiple types of objects need to
be identified and counted.
Chan A.B. et al [9] presented a privacy-preserving
vision system for estimating the size of inhomogeneous
crowds composed of pedestrians that travel in different
directions. First, the crowd was segmented into
components of homogeneous motion, using the mixture of
dynamic textures motion models. From each segmented
region a set of simple general features was extracted, and
the correspondence between features and the number of
people per segment was cultured with Gaussian Process
Regression.
Fiaschi et al [10] proposed to estimate the object
density map by averaging over structured, namely patch-
wise predictions. They computed dense features by
ordinary filter banks and proposed to use a regression
forest to predict entire patches of the desired density
function. A regression random forest is an ensemble of
regression trees. Each tree associates a continuous
prediction with each input. Those structured predictions
were averaged both across predictors in the ensemble and
across space. In a trial the tool bacterial cells microscopic
images composed of 200 images. Compare pixel to pixel
regression prediction of entire patches further improved
performance and reduced variability. The data consisted
of 2000 video frames. They split the data into four
different training and test sets: maximal, downscale,
upscale and minimal. They used 800 patches per image
and in order to compensate for the difference in training
set size.
Idrees et al., [11] proposed to compute an estimate of
the number of individuals present in an extremely dense
crowd visible in a single image to leverage multiple
sources of information. They employed a global
consistency constraint on counts using Markov Random
Field. They employed Fourier analysis along with head
detections.
Theirs process provided two important pieces of
information: They estimated count per local region, and a
measure of error relative to the original image. They
combined the three sources, Fourier, interest points and
head Detection, with their respective confidences. It was
concluded that they fused information from three sources
in terms of counts, confidences and different measures at
the patch level. They enforced smoothness constraint on
978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
nearby patches to improve estimates of incorrect patches,
thereby producing better estimates at the image level.
Lempitsky et al., [12] proposed a new supervised
learning framework for visual object counting tasks, such
as estimating the number of cells in a microscopic image
or the number of humans in surveillance video frames.
They tried to develop a simple and general discriminative
learning-based framework for counting objects in images.
Similar to global regression methods, it also evades the
hard problem of detecting all object instances in the
images. Bacterial cells in fluorescence-light microscopy
images: Their first experiment was concerned with
synthetic images, emulating microscopic views of the
colonies of bacterial cells. The following approaches were
considered: The proposed density-based approach, The
counting-by-regression baseline, The counting-by-
detection baseline. It was concluded that during the
learning their approach was optimizing the loss based on
the MESA-distance. This loss involved counting
accurately over multiple subarrays of the entire image.
Dr. S. Vijayarani et al.,[13] proposed template
matching technique for searching words in document
images. In digital photography the template matching
technique is used to find the part of the image in the given
input image. When the image is given to find the template
is made for that image and processes ang gives the
number of images found as a total count as an
output.Using template matching technique they found the
text which is to be searched.they processed that text and
found the total count.
III. Proposed System
A. Aim of the project
In our project we are more interested in the census of
the birds as they play an important role in nature. We are
going to illustrate the three methods i.e., thresholding,
templatematching, contour methods where we analyze
these methods and make conclusions.
Bird population is a major and a complicated task to
do.Manual counting is not efficient in a flock of birds as
the person may miss some birds or recount the same bird.
So, we come across many methods which are used in
different circumstances. In this project will help in
counting the bird or object efficiently which conserves the
time and reduces the error done during the manual count.
B. Project modules
As we know whenever there is a counting process, it is
concentrated in a particular field.So in our project we are
trying to generalize the image processing so that it is not
confined to counting one type of object like finding
number of people in an image, number of leaves in a tree,
pens in a stand, number of cans, number of cells, medical
region etc.
IV. SYSTEM DESIGN
In this section we describe the system design and data
flow of the techniques used in this project.
1484
 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2

A. Flowchart
The image in which we must count the birds is given
as input. The given image is preprocessed to make
suitable processing of the image which makes the
counting of birds easy. The preprocessed image is later
analysed and applied suitable techniques to count the
birds. The count of birds is displayed as the result. This
process is represented in the flow chart as shown in figure
2.

Fig. 3. Use case diagram

Fig. 2. Flowchart

Use case diagram shows how the system works as

shown in figure 3. Actors are users and software
developers. User is the one who makes use of the
application developed by software developer. Initially the
camera gets the images of the region where it has been
installed. Those images are considered as the input for the Fig. 4. Data flow diagram of thresholding
analysis. Cropping all the features by the users. After that
the process of template matching occurs. It returns the The figure.5 shows the data flow diagram for Template
count of the ROI. Software developer develops an matching. The image for which you want to find the count
application which searches all the ROI and returns the of the object of interest has to read. Crop the ROI in the
count. image. Collect all the ROI.Set count initially to zero.
Once all the ROI are there it iteratively searches for
B. Data flow diagram templates from one end to another end of the image.
Whenever a match is found count is incremented.
In this section, a data flow diagram for three ways of
implementation is as shown. The figure 4 shows data flow
diagram of thresholding. In this technique, the input
image is read by the user. The image is converted to an 8-
bit grayscale image and later thresholding is applied to
that image and it is distinguished as background and
foreground using the initial value of T(threshold). Then
compute the average grayscale values and new threshold
values. Repeat this process until the difference between
successive iterations is less than T.

Fig. 5. Data Flow diagram of template matching

978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE 1485

 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2
The image is completely processed by a set of pixels by
pixels. When all the parts of the image are analyzed it
returns the count. The figure 6, Shows data Flow diagram
of contouring. In This technique store the image by using
variable path and convert the image to grayscale then
based on the threshold value it assigns one value else the
other value. The same value which are connected forms as
a single object.The curved formed becomes a contour.The
contours are a useful tool for shape analysis and object
detection and recognition.Contour area function can
calculate the contour area of the object. Here the object is
a bird. When it gets a bird, it will calculate the area and if
it satisfies the condition of minimum area to be counted as
a dot, then it will assign the value of its area to the list.
Fig. 6. Data Flow diagram of contouring.
Finally, the count bird is calculated and the count of birds
in a given input image is given as the output.
V. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
We have three different methodologies to carry out our
work of bird counting. They are thresholding, template
matching and contouring. Thresholding is implemented
using ImageJ open-source software. Template matching
is implemented using Python and OpenCV. Contouring is
implemented using Python and Jupyter notebook. The
system working details are discussed below:
A.Thresholding
Thresholding is the simplest method of segmenting
images. We can use Thresholding to create binary images
from a grayscale image. Thresholding is a technique for
dividing an image into two (or more) classes of pixels,
which are typically called "foreground" and
"background". The simplest thresholding methods replace
each and every pixel in an image with a black pixel if the
image intensity is less than some fixed constant T
(that is, ), or a white pixel if the image
intensity is greater than that fixed constant. There are
different types of thresholding namely “local
thresholding”, “global thresholding”, “multiband
thresholding”, “automatic thresholding”.
978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
Local thresholding: Local thresholding techniques adapt
the threshold value on each pixel to the local image
characteristics.
Global thresholding: Globalthresholding works by
choosing a value cutoff, such that every pixel less than
that value is considered one class, while every pixel
greater than that value is considered the other class.
Multiband thresholding: Colour images can also be
thresholded. One approach is to define a separate
threshold for each of the RGB components of the image
and then combine them using an AND operation.
Automatic thresholding: Automatic thresholding
technique is a way to extract useful information which is
encoded as pixels while minimizing background noise.
This is obtained by utilizing a feedback loop which is
used to optimize the threshold value before converting the
original grayscale image to binary. The main intention is
to separate the image into two parts; the background and
foreground.
1. Assume some initial threshold value, typically
the mean 8-bit value of the original image.
2. Divide the original image into two portions.
i. Pixel values that are less than or equal to the
threshold; background
ii. Pixel values greater than the threshold;
foreground.
3. Find the average mean values of the two images.
4. Calculate the new threshold by averaging the two
means.
5. If the difference between the previous threshold
value and the new threshold value are below a specified
limit, then that is the suitable threshold value. Otherwise
set the new threshold value to the original image and keep
trying.
The ImageJ software is used for implementation of
thresholding technique on the image for bird counting.
Input the image of our interest for counting of birds.
There are many kinds of birds in nature with a variety of
features, each differing from one another. The photograph
of birds may contain as few birds as one or as many birds
as thousands. Our task is to count all the birds in the
image as accurately as possible. Initially input the image
of a bird. This image may be of any type like RGB image,
grayscale image, Black & white image.
It is appropriate to convert it into an 8-bit grayscale
image. Thus, each pixel in the image is an 8-bit integer
giving a range of possible values from 0 to 255. Usually,
zero is taken to be black, and 255 is taken to be white.
The values in between make the different shades of gray.
Now adjust the threshold thus the birds (region of
interest) are of similar pixel values and the region not
required to be considered is of similar pixel values. The
pixel values above the threshold will be made black and
below the threshold value will be made white. Sometimes,
1486
 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2
due to polarity thresholding may be inverted. It is
appropriate to divide the entire image into background
and foreground. Usually, the foreground group contains
the birds. Now, count the foreground instances which
represent the birds in the image.
Following fig. 7 shows the image after applying the
thresholding technique. This threshold image is analyzed
by analyzing the particles based on its pixel size and
circularity. These particles are counted to get the count of
the birds in the image. The masking is applied to mark the
birds in the image as shown in fig. 8. The parameters like
total area, %area, average size and mean, of the particles
which are counted are summarized as shown in fig. 9 each
particles’ area, mean, min and max pixel values are also
displayed as the result of this entire process. This is
shown in fig. 10 .
Fig. 7. Thresholding the image to separate birds from the
background.
Fig. 8. Marking the birds by counting them.
Fig. 9. Summary of analysing the particles in the image.
978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
Fig. 10. Area, mean, min and max pixel value of each
particle.
The major difficulty in counting the birds arises when
the quality of the image is low, may be when the birds are
overlapped and may be overlapped, or they may be
similar to the objects the background or the background
itself. Thus, separating the birds from the image gets
difficult and increases the error in counting birds. To
minimize this error we may apply some techniques like
changing contrast, brightness, smoothing and blurring
techniques to eliminate the disturbances in the image and
make the birds in the image visible properly and are
differentiable from one another. Another disadvantage of
this technique is that the error is more when the birds are
very close and larger in size. Due to its large size, it
becomes difficult to consider the birds. This technique
may unknowingly separate the single bird into many birds
when there exists a difference in the pixel values. Also
when the birds are similar to that of the background, the
pixel values of birds and background may be similar and
group these backgrounds also as the foreground birds and
count them. Thus increase in particles indirectly increases
the bird count in the image and gives inaccurate results.
B. Template matching
The method used for counting of Region Of Interest is
“Template Matching”. Template matching is a technique
or a method to the location of the template image in a
particular image.
This technique moves the template image over the
image and compares every part of the image.
The method we have used in our project uses
CV_TM_CCORR_NORMED type of template matching
in OpenCV. It uses the Equation (1) below,
First, we have to read the image which we want to find
template images. Enter the number of features. Extract the
features and store in the folder. To extract the feature,
crop the ROI in the image and save it. Read all the
features required for the counting of template images.
Iteratively it searches for the template images. The
matched position is recorded, and a rectangle box is
drawn around the template images. Initially the count
which is zero is incremented whenever it encounters the
template images. The implementation includes for the
search of the identical regions with threshold. Here
threshold indicates the percentage of feature matching
1487
 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2

with respect to template image and part of the image

found. Threshold indicates the accuracy in finding the
template image in the image. As the threshold increases
the function (template matching) tries to find the more
accurate part of the image.

If the size of the image is (W x H) and the template

image size is (w x h), then the output image will have a
size of (W-w+1, H-h+1). It is preferred to set a threshold
greater than or equal to 0.8. This method gives much
accuracy with a high rate of threshold.

The working of Template matching is that the template

image is slide over the image. Templates and parts of
images are compared. If the compared part is greater than
the threshold then it is marked. In the function
cv2.matchTemplate(img_gray,template,cv2.TM_CCOEF
F_NORMED) the first parameter is the original image,
second parameter is the template image to be matched and
third parameter is the method used for matching. The
problems faced while using this method is that the pattern
occurrences should preserve the orientation of the
reference pattern image (template).It is not efficient if the
image is rotated, scaled, shaped, shear it will give false
output. The method becomes inefficient when image size
increases like medium or large images and it is time
consuming. This method is efficient on its way. In this it
compares the template images with the image. It is one of
the methods used for the feature extraction and searching
it in the interested image.
Fig. 13. Birds marked when number of features is 2
After that read that image as a template image in the
function and read the actual image as well. It iteratively
searches for the template image. In the first image it has
one feature the bird count is 9. Many birds do not pass the
feature test. With two features we get the majority of the
bird count i.e., 11. For three features the count rate
decreases as remaining birds do not satisfy the feature
comparison positively. The bird count is only 12. From
this we get an idea that the bird count mainly depends on
the feature which is cropped for the search.

First, we will be provided with an image. From it we

have to crop the Region of Interest (template image).

Fig. 14. Output showing count as 11

Fig. 11. Birds marked when number of features is 1

Fig. 15. Birds marked when number of features is 3

Fig. 12. Output showing count as 9

978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE 1488

 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2
Fig. 16. Output showing count as 12
We have to search for the most common feature among
the birds to get the maximum count from the feature. The
Different images indicate that it will be easy to find the
count of birds, but the problem is with the feature
selection and the threshold selection. As the images may
have lost some of the pixels the threshold should be
decreased at that time. For high resolution images this
problem does not occur.
We can see that the first feature covers most of the
birds, but addition of the last feature does not make much
difference as many birds do not have that feature. The
limitations with this method is that we cannot find the
template image if it is enlarged, scaled, tilted etc. The
threshold value depends on the image if there are any
losses in pixel or image features. It takes more time for
the large and high resolution pictures as the size is more
and iteration increases.This method can be used by many
sophisticated users like in bird sanctuaries to keep the
census information that is migration of birds during
seasons, scientists, zoologist, pathologist, in factories, in
agricultural fields. It is also used in earth observation
data. This method can be developed with more
sophisticated features to overcome the limitations and
give an efficient output which will be useful in many
fields.This method does give a uniform output due to
feature matching but it does not give an efficient result as
given by thresholding as there we convert an image to
binary and count the areas satisfying threshold property.
It is easy to get the count of ROI but difficult to
identify the proper ROI which gives maximum count.
Fig. 17. Image showing disadvantage of Template
matching
In above Image we can observe that the selected object
gives the number of count as three even though the bird in
978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
the blue box is similar to the bird selected as it is the
mirror image it is not considered for counting. Similarly
the bird in green box is scaled or enlarged even then it is
not recognized as template and count is not incremented.
C. Contouring
Contours can be described as a curve joining all the
continuous points having the identical color and intensity.
The contours are beneficial tools for shape analysis and
object detection and recognition. This work makes use of
threshold edge detection prior finding contours. The
function findContours( ) modifies the source image.
Objects to be found should be white and backgrounds
should be black or black and backgrounds should be
white. OpenCV has a find Contour function that helps in
extracting the contours from the image. It works
accurately for binary images, so we should first apply
thresholding techniques. Firstly, the image is taken as
input by taking the path variable. The image is to be
converted to grayscale using the function imread here the
parameter 0 indicates that the image needs to be
converted into black and white, shades image composing
by shades of gray.
The function threshold works as, if the pixel value is
higher than a threshold value, then it is assigned one value
with low pixel value like white, else it is assigned another
value with high pixel value like black. The arguments are
the source image that is a grayscale image and threshold
value which is used to classify the pixel values. For
threshold value, simply pass zero. Then the algorithm will
Find the optimal threshold value and give the second
output. If the thresholding is not used, this is the same as
the threshold value you used. The same pixel values
which are connected from one object and by using the
function image, contours, find Contours. It mainly
connects the black dots which are continuous and forms
as a single object. By using the function contourArea( ),
we can calculate the contour areas. The minimum and
maximum area of the bird is given. If the contour area is
in range, then it satisfies the condition it indicates the
required region the bird is obtained. As the bird is
obtained count is incremented. Finally, the count of birds
is given as output.
This method will not give the accurate output if the
birds are overlapped; differ in size, shape, dimensions and
structure. It is because the contour area combines with the
overlapped birds and it counts as a single object. If birds
differ in shape, it’s not considered to be in range
specified. Sometimes it considers the background image
as bird if the background images are in the range and it
satisfies the given condition. These drawbacks lead to less
accuracy in this method.
1489
 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2

Template 17 12 29 Accurate The exact

matching and feature
expected should be
output. extracted
to get
correct
count.The
template
should
not be
scaled or
rotated

Contouring 17 17 0 Count Counting

the can be
Fig. 18. Output of Contouring. number affected
of dots. by
overlap
and loss
of pixel

The TABLE I describes the bird count, error in

percentage, advantage, disadvantage of all the techniques
used in this project.

VII. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we applied techniques of image

Fig. 19. Bird count obtained by applying contouring
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
These methods have their own feature and property. In
thresholding the counting for mass population is more
efficient but sometimes it considers disturbances like
branches or leaves or stones hence we have to subtract the
background or sometimes the birds may overlap. If an
image has lost some data, we have to retrieve it. We have
to use some blur and filter concepts to overcome the
noise. Template matching may be a better method than
this as it will find the template image (Image which is
selected) all over the original image. The important point
to note is that features should be extracted carefully so it
can cover the maximum matches. One of the
disadvantages over thresholding is that for counting
templates which are scaled or rotated or inverted it is
unable to recognize. When there is a large set of birds, we
have to extract more features as feature increases error
decreases. Last method is contouring. In this method
counting is easier when compared. First it creates an edge
and then counts the spots which are there. It gives good
output for a large population. It gives more error when the
objects are overlapped and if there are any disturbances as
described in thresholding.
TABLE I. Result and Comparison of all techniques
Method Manual Count From Error Pros
Count Method (in %)
Thresholding 17 17 0 Easy for
a large
number
of
objects.
processing such as thresholding, template matching and
contouring to a digital photograph to estimate the birds in
a given time instance. In thresholding, an attempt is made
to separate the image into two clusters, background and
foreground and tried to count the birds. In template
matching, we created a template for the region of interest
(ROI) and counted the number of such instances in the
image. The contouring concept gives the correct count
value for images of flock of birds. There will be slight
error when overlapping is occurred in the image of birds.
Thus, we conclude that each technique has its own
advantage, and they can be used in circumstances and
situations such as populated areas, similar objects etc.
many factors depend on selection of the method.
REFERENCES
[1] Nijhuis, M., “A Gathering Storm for North American
Birds”, Audu-bon, 25-32. Volume 116, Sept., 2014.
[2] Prater, A.J. 1979. Trends in accuracy of counting
birds. Bird Study 26: 198–200.
[3] Gilmer, D.S., Brass, J.A., Strong, L.L. & Card, D.H.
1988. Goose counts from aerial photographs using
an optical digitizer. Wildl. Soc. Bull. 16:204–206.
Cons
[4] Bajzak, D. & Piatt, J.F. 1990. Computer-aided
Counting procedure for counting waterfowl on aerial photographs.
affected Wildl. Soc. Bull. 18: 125–129.
by noise.
Threshold [5] Cunningham, D.J., Anderson, W.H. & Anthony,
differs
from R.M. 1996. An image-processing program for automated
image to counting. Wildl. Soc. Bull. 24: 345–346.
image.

978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE 1490

 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS 2021)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP21K74-ART; ISBN: 978-0-7381-1327-2

[6] Bibby, C.J., Burgess, N.D., Hill, D.A. & Mustoe,

S.H. 2000. Bird Census Techniques. 2nd Ed. London
: Academic Press.

[7] Juan M. Pérez-García,” The use of digital photography

in censuses of large concentrations of passerines: the case
of a winter starling roost-site, Revista Catalana
d’Ornitologia 28:28-33, 2012.

[8] Barbedo JGA. A review on methods for automatic

counting of objects in digital images. (2012).

[9] Chan, AB, Liang ZSJ, Vasconcelos N. Privacy

preserving crowd monitoring: Counting people without
people models or tracking. In: CVPR, (2008).

[10] Fiaschi L, Nair RK, Oethe U, Hamprechi F. Learning

to count with regression forest and structured labels. In
proc. ICPR (2012).

[12] Idrees HS, Aleemi I, Seibert C, Shah M. Multi

source, multi scale counting in extremely dense crowd
images. In: CVPR, (2013).

[13] Lempitsky V, Zisserman A. Learning to count

objects in images. In: NIPS, (2010).

[14] Dr. S.Vijayarani, Ms. A.Sakila.Template matching

technique for search words in document images.In:
IJCI,(2015).

978-0-7381-1327-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE 1491

View publication stats