ArcticMigrants: Arctic migratory birds pushed over the edge?
Due to its favourable location, the Netherlands harbours at times large numbers of migratory birds, and bears an international responsibility to accommodate them. Many of these birds spend the summer above the Arctic circle. Because climate changes faster in the Arctic than elsewhere, the question arises whether these birds are under threat. In this project, […]
AI toolkit for phenotyping bird populations
In cooperation with Track32 we developed a computer vision and AI toolkit for phenotyping bird populations. This software toolkit can handle complex datasets, containing both bird images and information from field work and other sources. An important part of the toolkit is a vision algorithm that can segment an image of a bird’s head into […]
Research on chick survival within the Lapwing year
One of the best known meadow birds, the Lapwing, is not doing well. From the mid-90s, the number of breeding Lapwings in our country declines rapidly. In the period 2005-2014 even by almost 5 percent per year. That is why 2016 has been declared the Year of Lapwing by Sovon and Bird Protection Netherlands. The […]
Are the birds starving? How pesticides affect insectivorous birds.
Neonicotinoids have received a lot of attention in recent years because of their possible effects on bees and other invertebrates. Imidacloprid is the most widely used worldwide and has consistently been in the top 3 of pesticides that exceed the Dutch standard since 2003. In July 2014, a strong correlation was found between the decline […]