BIRD1445: Large-scale Multimodal Bird Dataset for Ecological Monitoring

ObjectiveWith the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and growing demands in ecological monitoring, high-quality multimodal datasets have become essential for training and deploying AI models in specialized domains. Existing bird datasets, however, face notable limitations, including challenges in field data acquisition, high costs of expert annotation, limited representation of rare species, and reliance on single-modal data. To overcome these constraints, this study proposes an efficient framework for constructing large-scale multimodal datasets tailored to ecological monitoring. By integrating heterogeneous data sources, employing intelligent semi-automatic annotation pipelines, and adopting multi-model collaborative validation based on heterogeneous attention fusion, the proposed approach markedly reduces the cost of expert annotation while maintaining high data quality and extensive modality coverage. This work offers a scalable and intelligent strategy for dataset development in professional settings and provides a robust data foundation for advancing AI applications in ecological conservation and biodiversity monitoring.MethodsThe proposed multimodal dataset construction framework integrates multi-source heterogeneous data acquisition, intelligent semi-automatic annotation, and multi-model collaborative verification to enable efficient large-scale dataset development. The data acquisition system comprises distributed sensing networks deployed across natural reserves, incorporating high-definition intelligent cameras, custom-built acoustic monitoring devices, and infrared imaging systems, supplemented by standardizedpublic data to enhance species coverage and modality diversity. The intelligent annotation pipeline is built upon four core automated tools: (1) spatial localization annotation leverages object detection algorithms to generate bounding boxes; (2) fine-grained classification employs Vision Transformer models for hierarchical species identification; (3) pixel-level segmentation combines detection outputs with SegGPT models to produce instance-level masks; and (4) multimodal semantic annotation uses Qwen large language models to generate structured textual descriptions. To ensure annotation quality and minimize manual verification costs, a multi-scale attention fusion verification mechanism is introduced. This mechanism integrates seven heterogeneous deep learning models, each with different feature perception capacities across local detail, mid-level semantic, and global contextual scales. A global weighted voting module dynamically assigns fusion weights based on model performance, while a prior knowledge-guided fine-grained decision module applies category-specific accuracy metrics and Top-K model selection to enhance verification precision and computational efficiency.Results and DiscussionsThe proposed multi-scale attention fusion verification method dynamically assesses data quality based on heterogeneous model predictions, forming the basis for automated annotation validation. Through optimized weight allocation and category-specific verification strategies, the collaborative verification framework evaluates the effect of different model combinations on annotation accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that the optimal verification strategy—achieved by integrating seven specialized models—outperforms all baseline configurations across evaluation metrics. Specifically, the method attains a Top-1 accuracy of 95.39% on the CUB-200-2011 dataset, exceeding the best-performing single-model baseline, which achieves 91.79%, thereby yielding a 3.60% improvement in recognition precision. The constructed BIRD1445 dataset, comprising 3.54 million samples spanning 1 445 bird species and four modalities, outperforms existing datasets in terms of coverage, quality, and annotation accuracy. It serves as a robust benchmark for fine-grained classification, density estimation, and multimodal learning tasks in ecological monitoring.ConclusionsThis study addresses the challenge of constructing large-scale multimodal datasets for ecological monitoring by integrating multi-source data acquisition, intelligent semi-automatic annotation, and multi-model collaborative verification. The proposed approach advances beyond traditional manual annotation workflows by incorporating automated labeling pipelines and heterogeneous attention fusion mechanisms as the core quality control strategy. Comprehensive evaluations on benchmark datasets and real-world scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of the method: (1) the verification strategy improves annotation accuracy by 3.60% compared to single-model baselines on the CUB-200-2011 dataset; (2) optimal trade-offs between precision and computational efficiency are achieved using Top-K = 3 model selection, based on performance-complexity alignment; and (3) in large-scale annotation scenarios, the system ensures high reliability across 1 445 species categories. Despite its effectiveness, the current approach primarily targets species with sufficient data. Future work should address the representation of rare and endangered species by incorporating advanced data augmentation and few-shot learning techniques to mitigate the limitations posed by long-tail distributions.