Excluding species handling

[aav7fl]

How does the Always Exclude Species setting work?

If I exclude a species from the list, will:

1. BirdNET always choose the highest scoring bird for a sound and then ignore it if it matches a filtered species?
   or
2. BirdNET take all of the possible matching birds to a sound and go through the list until it matches a bird not in the exclude list?

Here's my use-case.

I have a lot of red-wing blackbirds in the area. However, BirdNET keeps thinking that the flocks are Rusty Blackbirds (which is fair, they sound almost the same).

But after adding the Rusty Blackbird to my exclude list, I was expecting to see BirdNET choose the next possible scoring bird for that sound, the Red-Wing Blackbird. But that doesn't appear to be the case? Instead I think it's taking any result that matches the Rusty Blackbird and dropping it entirely. Which means it never detects the red-wing blackbird because it always seems to choose the Rusty Blackbird first.

Is that how it's working?

(I've only been capturing sounds for 2-ish days, so I don't actually know if this is the case yet)

[uSlackr]

Interesting, I always assumed it would choose not to report birds that match your species - your #1. I've not seen the bird I excluded reported since I added it (why would there be a common loon in my neighborhood given there's no room for a water take off? :-) )

[aav7fl]

To answer my own question, I have a 70% confidence that it works like this. But I could easily be wrong, so please don't take this as fact.

My understanding is that the "Always Exclude Species" setting filters out species from the results so they aren't considered in the speciesScores for a sample. This means that when BirdNET excludes a species, it does not throw out the entire result. It simply won't add the excluded species as a contender for the sample.

birdnet-go/internal/birdnet/range_filter.go

Lines 97 to 108 in 7c66557

	// Collect species scores above a certain threshold
	var speciesScores []SpeciesScore
	for _, filter := range filters {
	if filter.Score >= bn.Settings.BirdNET.RangeFilter.Threshold {
	// Check if species is in exclude list before adding
	if !isSpeciesExcluded(filter.Label, bn.Settings.Realtime.Species.Exclude) {
	speciesScores = append(speciesScores, SpeciesScore{Score: float64(filter.Score), Label: filter.Label})
	} else {
	bn.Debug("Excluding species from range filter: %s", filter.Label)
	}
	}
	}

As for why I haven't been seeing the "red-winged blackbird" in my results, I have no idea.

Species Settings

Luckily, BirdNET-Go supports species specific threshold settings through the species_settings.csv.

birdnet-go/doc/species_config.csv

Lines 1 to 6 in 7c66557

	# Species Configuration File
	# Format: species,confidence[,actions]
	# - Species: Common or scientific name (case insensitive)
	# - Confidence: 0.0 to 1.0 for detection threshold, >1.0 to exclude
	# - Actions (optional): Semicolon-separated list, e.g., ExecuteScript:/path/to/script.sh:param1
	# you can provide parameters to script by separating them with : (colon)

In my case, this goes alongside the config.yaml in my deployment.

Supposedly I should be able to add this, and it should start excluding the 'rusty blackbird' and prioritizing the 'red-winged blackbird'.

# Exclude Rusty Blackbird as it's always mistaken as a red-winged blackbird
rusty blackbird,2.0

# Lower threshold for Red-Winged Blackbird to prioritize it
red-winged blackbird,0.4

So I'm going to try that and hope I start seeing the red-winged blackbird in my results. Otherwise I'm going to start questioning my ability to ID these birds. 😅

EDIT: I had trouble getting any changes in the species_config.csv to actually make show a change when running birdnet-go range print. I'm not actually sure if that file is being used anymore.

So instead I added the same configuration in the Custom Species Configuration section of the /settings/species endpoint in the UI.