Machine learning techniques have always been a strong candidate for
solving complex recognition problems. Drone/Bird detection and
classification is one of the most challenging tasks in recent years.
Both drones and birds come in different sizes, velocities, and
behaviors. The lack of bird images and videos is tackled in this work.
Deep learning, classical machine learning techniques such as Support
Vector Machines (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) in addition to shallow
neural network (NN) learning methods are used. Combined open-source data
sets and labeled bird images data sets are used in training and testing
for detection and classification. In particular, several deep learning
methods are used in the detection of RGB and IR drone images. They were
compared with the new SSD-AdderNet which showed the best results in the
detection of IR images while exhibiting the least complexity. The SVM
proved to be the best in classification.