Eastern Canada Flocks: Images and manually annotated bird positions

The Eastern Canada (ECA) Flocks data set consists of manually annotated
Images from the Common Eider (COEI, Somateria mollissima) Winter Survey
and the Greater Snow Geese (GSGO, Anser caerulescens atlanticus) Spring
Survey. The images were taken in Eastern Canada using fixed-wing aircraft
and manually annotated with ImageJ’s Cell counter plugins. We selected and
annotated the ECA Flocks images in order to test the precision of the
CountEm flock size estimation method. ECA Flocks includes 179 COEI and 99
GSGO single flock images. We cut each image manually to a rectangle that
excluded large parts of the image with no birds. Both versions (original
and cut) of each image are available in the data set. We manually
annotated 637,555 (124,309 COEI and 514,235 GSGO) bird positions in the
cut images from both surveys. Each bird has an associated “Type” which
refers to species and/or sex. Sex identification was only possible for
adult common eiders since females and immature males are brown birds
whereas adult males have mainly white plumage. 64,484 male and 58,029
females were identified in the COEI images, as well as 1796 birds of other
species. 504,891 Snow Geese and 9344 birds of other species were labeled
in the GSGO images. A .csv file including all annotated bird positions and
types is available for each image. The COEI and GSGO photos of the ECA
Flocks data set were taken in the years 2006 and 2018 and 2016-2018
respectively. We selected these photos in order to include images with
different quality and resolution. COEI and GSGO flock sizes range from 6
to 4,154 and from 43 to 36, 241 respectively. There is high variability in
light conditions, backgrounds, number and spatial arrangement of birds
across the images. The data set is therefore potentially useful to test
the precision of methods for analyzing imagery to estimate the abundance
of animals by directly detecting, identifying and counting individuals.