From: "Koen Verbanck"
> As a birdwatcher and birdphotographer I spent many hours in the field.
> Birdcall and songs have always be very important to locate and identify
> birds. In recent years sound & soundrecording are gaining more and more
> importance in the identification and documentation of (rare) birds.
I've done years of scientific recording for documentation. Though of
frogs. I also do photography at the same time. All over out in the field
with gear for both.
> A few months ago I posted a similar question, but so far all solutions
> are still a bit to expensive. The greatest cost is not the record-device=
> itself (like
> f.e. a Hi-MD minidisk), but more so the microphone (f.e. Sennheiser).
> Any help still greatly appreciated.
Yes the mic is key, along with how you use it. I managed to end up with
pretty good mics (mostly MKH) by investing lots of time hunting used
ones. If money is tight, places like ebay are your friend. It still
won't be free, but won't be quite as painful.
There is a close parallel to wildlife photography. The microphone is
like the lens. How much did you spend on the lenses you use in your bird
photography? I do both photography and recording, so have some idea. I
lust after the Minolta 600mm f4. There are three on ebay right now at
way lower than their original price. Last I checked the cheapest bid was
about $4500, still way too much for me to afford. But it does kind of
put a high end mic setup for nature recording into perspective, you
could buy two Telinga stereo parabolics with that and have lots left
over. Or buy a Telinga and a SD722 recorder and have money left over. If
you could get the mics for what I paid, probably enough left over for a
SASS/MKH-20 for ambient and close recordings. And we have not counted
the Minolta 7D camera body that cost me $1500 over a year ago, or
tripods and other supporting gear. In reality since I cannot afford the
600mm, I use a zoom lens that get's me to 500mm (not counting the
digital camera's multiplier). That plus good tripods, a nice Kirk window
mount and so on are my primary bird setup. The cost of what I do use
just for long tele would buy a pretty high end sound setup. And that's
only a small part of my photography.
What I do is try to balance my photography and sound recording budgets.
Don't let one eat the other. Because of Minolta's decision recently
photography has been getting more money.
I know that above did not come up with a cheap outfit. Like photography
that's a choice you make between quality and price. Get the best quality
for the money you can afford and get out recording. Don't shortchange
the sound recording any more than you would the photography.
The idea that you will be able to find a mic you can set up and it will
record all birds that call at all distances and directions simply won't
work, it's the equivalent of trying to photographically document birds
with a fisheye lens, you will need to specifically aim the mic at what
you want for the most part. For documentation that's not hours of
recording, but minutes and requires your active participation. The best
single mic choice for survey recording is the parabolic, you get more
reach for less cost than any other way. Your mic in the parabolic gets
whatever quality it's got improved by all the gain the dish provides
before the mic.
My first parabolic was a $75 dish and a Sony tie tac mic costing on
the order of $50. And my recorder was a Sony MZ-R30 minidisc (bought new
when they first came out). That produced a lot of recordings for
scientific documentation in a statewide distribution survey before I
moved up to the Telinga. The recordings were praised by the biologists I
work with for their high quality. It was easy to do sonograms from them
and ID's could be made. I recorded at over 900 sites over the 5 year
survey producing between photography and sound 3622 individual
documentation records, most of that was from sound. Except for the last
year or so it was the cheap parabolic used. Such a outfit will document
birds, I was documenting frogs. Since documentation occurs wherever you
find them, most sites I recorded were full of unwanted noise, the
parabolic's directionality was essential. Try recording frogs 50' from a
busy freeway when your only access points the mic at the freeway. That
parabolic I used is shown at the bottom of this webpage which has a
possible similar design based on a spare dish for a Telinga:
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/docs/quickparabolic.html
Couple that with a minidisc recorder off ebay and you have at least the
equivalent of a low end DSLR with a short tele (actually probably
better). For less than that camera and lens would cost.
Will you want to move up and have better? Most likely you will, but
that's a start and will work. You have a lot of surprises and a lot to
learn once you get out recording. Choosing high end equipment is much
better done from your own experience.
Yes, I know a parabolic dish is not small, though the minidisc recorder
is. For survey you will need the reach, so really no choice. A full up
Telinga stereo dish is very light, however, and it can be rolled up for
shipping. A homemade based on that dish can be close to that light.
Bulldozing through brush with a parabolic can also be fun, but it can be
done. And the polycarbonate telinga dish does stand up to a lot.
With the regular Telinga Stereo dish you would also have the ability to
record without the dish. The reach is not good but at least you could
cover a small area. The tie tac mics used in the homemade above will not
work for that very well, though by going up in price/quality for those
you can get some for recording locally.
Walt
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