Non destructive counting of wheatear with picture analysis

Many researchers, notably Schueller (1992) or Stafford et al. (1994), are working on the variability of cultivation (especially cereals) and inputs. In an agricultural parcel (supposed to be homogeneous) yield levels vary considerably from one place to another one. Variations from 1 to 4 are usual. The main measurement to represent this variation is yield mapping. This mapping is carried out at harvest time. This seems to be too late (no loop back to the corresponding cultivation is possible). Furthermore, some distortion may appear in this measure because of natural events (beating down of corn) or artificial events (harvest machinery tuning, ...). The object of the present project is to find an early indicator of the cultivation variability. This indicator should be correlated with yield and non destructive for wheatears. The crop used in the present study is wheat. The authors chose the number of wheatears as their indicator, and tried to put into place an automatic system for counting wheatears