Attention use in Great tits

3D Sycnrhonized System in the wild

We developed a cheap, mobile outdoor system for 3D posture tracking in wild passerines. Using multiple raspberry pis and PTP time synchronization between the pis, we developed a system for multiple synchronized cameras to be mounted inside a 1m x 1m x1m cage in the field, to allow 3D reconstruction of postures in small passerine birds (Great Tits and Blue Tits). We hope to present a cheap, mobile and flexible system to study birds in the wild using computer vision.

We used an RFID triggered stimulus presentation box to present wild birds with a social stimulus (fake great tit model), asocial stimulus (food, mealworms) and control (empty box). By obtaining 3D keypoints of the eyes and beaks of the birds, we can then measure the relative angle between the stimulus object and the eyes, to gain insight into the visual field use of the tits. This upcoming field season, we will again deploy the system with a puzzle box, to study how attention relates to social learning in a wild transmission experiment with great tits, by building attention networks using the gaze information obtained from 3D tracking.