Hi Scratchpaws, It appears that you may have been put off using a
parabolic dish. Contrary to popular belief, they are quite capable of
making stereo recordings. If the purchase price seems a bit steep, then
consider constructing one yourself for use with any microphone you have
to hand. The dish does not have to be preformed, but can be sectional.
Take a look at the bottom of my blog post here at
http://audiofieldrecordings.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/field-recording-equ\
ipment-used-with-audio-samples/
<http://audiofieldrecordings.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/field-recording-eq\
uipment-used-with-audio-samples/> which illustrates a 31" dish I
constructed from upvc sections. The audio demonstrates its ability in
use, even when using a fairly cheap stereo lapel microphone simply
clipped inside the dish at its focal point, so no spectacular recordings
to be heard here.
A large parabolic dish will of course be difficult to handle in any sort
of wind, so you would need to shelter from the wind-flow, but this would
still be capable of concentrating the sound of the tree-tops from quite
a long-long way off.
I also use a Sennheiser ME67 long shotgun mic, but they can sound a bit
monotonous on their own, so would need mixing with other mics, unless of
course you wish to record just specie-specific sounds.
Best of luck!
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