To improve the head detection accuracy in video sequences captured with fixed vertical monocular camera, a novel method of head recognition based on mean shift and multiple features is proposed. Firstly, mean shiftbased image segmentation algorithm with color information and spatial information is suggested to derive the candidate head components in images. Furthermore, by referring to two features that the contour of human head regions are approximate round and the hair color distribution is clustered, the evaluation models based on the contour information and inside color information of candidate head components are presented for head recognition. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce the light interfere and eliminate fake target whose color information is similar to hair color distribution. The detection rate for static images can reach about 89.4%.