Sound recording birdsong

[3dpan]

As an update, I have ordered two matched pairs of microphone capsules, Primo EM272, from England, to make my own SASS field microphone.
Refer https://acousticnature.com/journal/how- ... microphone ,
and this, https://caperteebirder.com/?page_id=284

[Ken George]

I'd love to have a look at that when you get it built. I've looked at Vicky Powys SASS rig and read her articles about it and the other ambient systems. There seems be quite a range of choice of materials for the actual housing, have you settled on something or want to wait till the mics arrive and then see what works best. Keeps us posted on your progress.

[3dpan]

I'd love to have a look at that when you get it built. I've looked at Vicky Powys SASS rig and read her articles about it and the other ambient systems. There seems be quite a range of choice of materials for the actual housing, have you settled on something or want to wait till the mics arrive and then see what works best. Keeps us posted on your progress.

I have ordered a Yoga block from Trade-me to use as a base.
But beyond that I'm prepared to "play it by ear" if necessary. I'll do some more reading on possible variations, maybe smaller nose, wider head.

[3dpan]

I'd be really interested to hear your review of the unit when it arrives. I've considered the parabolic microphone setup but the cost and bulkiness are a bit of an impediment. Looks like this unit could be a compromise. What brand is it?

This unit is listed extensively on eBay, from several sellers in China, but no brand name given.
For example, https://www.ebay.com/itm/195118928940

It's also listed on Amazon (search parabolic microphone) with several different brand names, although all with the same images and description.

The unit I have ordered is only 250mm diameter, whereas others I have looked at are usually 500-600mm dia, and at least 20X-40X the price.
I may yet buy one of the expensive ones, but not before playing with my "toy" first

For reference, can I refer you to https://www.wildtronics.com/index.html
They're a USA manufacturer with several different models.
But their website also contains some really interesting info in the "Articles" section on parabolic mics, audio recorders and their use.

Well, the first of the two parabolics arrived today from China.
Looks good, magnifies the sound of whatever it's aimed at, but the mic is noisy. I'll try to replace it with an EM272 when it arrives from the UK.

[Ken George]

Has anybody had any good recording experiences lately? Due to a significant shoulder injury at the beginning of spring last year, and several months of treatment and physio, I did almost nothing. No sooner had that come right, by about mid-November, when what will be referred to, at least in the upper half of the North Island, as the 'summer' of 22/23 started. I do have some pretty good thunderstorm recordings, if anybody needs them for special effects....Anyway, now it's autumn and the bush birds have mostly gone quiet again. Oh well, always next spring. Incidentally, from what I have seen, the Australian sound recording group, after a covid hiatus of a couple of years, also had weather related issues at their first post-covid workshop at the Gluepot Reserve in South Australia. Challenging times!

[3dpan]

I bought a Zoom H8 recorder, because it was a sale price, and because I was wondering about an ambisonic mic.
Especially as i found an interesting DIY project for a first order ambisonic mic,
https://www.instructables.com/Ambi-Alic ... icrophone/

Otherwise, for actual recordngs, the birds seem to have deserted me, even the dawn chorus was feeble.
I did manage to record a passing thunderstorm, made me wish I had bought a 32-bit recorder.
And an interesting chorus of frogs.
But now everything seems drowned out by the cicadas.

[Jim Kirker]

I've been recording with a Samsung cellphone on a windowsill with window ajar. It's fun finding them in long stretches of background noise. The RecForge II Pro ap is great, you can cut and crop on the phone and set the sensitivity while recording.

[Ken George]

I'm sure you are all familiar with Xeno-Canto, but if you're not, check it out. It's an excellent and easily usable platform dedicated to world bird vocalisations. There are just under 800 thousand recordings of nearly 10,500 species. There's some pretty hard-core recordists on there, the two top contributors have submitted more than 35,000 and 32,000 recordings each respectively. Here in NZ, I'm particularly interested in the regional variations in the many noises tui make, and also how regionally their vocalisations change and evolve over time. I'd like to see more tui recordings up on Xeno-Canto. If you click on Tui in the Search Recordings box, and look on the map that shows the distribution of tui recordings, you'll see that there are big gaps regionally in the archived records of tui sound recordings. If you have any recordings, please add them. I'm interested in any new recordings of the Kapiti Island tui; if you look up tui on the NZ Birds Online website, and find the recording that Carl and Lise Weismann made on Kapiti of tui there nearly 70 years ago, they sound quite different from the contemporary Kapiti Coast birds. I'm sure there's a research paper topic or degree submission in there somewhere for some budding young ornithologist of the future. Avian linguistics, is there such a thing?