Abstract
Observing bird nests by use of video cameras is a frequently used method to study breeding ecology of birds. Despite its versatility, this method demands a great amount of time and trouble for a human reviewer to extract the relevant information from these video data. We tested the utility of a motion detecting software "UFO Capture V2" applied to video data in which parent birds delivered food to their nests. Using this software, we captured video clips of the birds' feeding behavior and compared them to data that had already been recorded by a human observer. As a result, we succeeded in detecting all the feedings, though non-feeding movements were inevitably captured. This software would be an effective tool to assist the analysis of video data, because a human reviewer would only need to review the portions of the recordings that were identified by the software in order to exclude the non-feeding movements.
