Field Recording Sourcebook..


My field setup

The graphic below illustrates my recording setup. It is rather overboard, but suits my needs. The parabolic microphone is highly directional, this makes it, in my opinion, high maintenence. The need to frequently re-point the dish at whoever is calling at the moment is always there. One additional agnst for me is the frequent situation where an "important" bird flys in at 90 degrees or more away from where the dish is pointed, calls loudly once or twice and then before I can pan the dish in its direction it flys off, show over.

You will also notice that I do not include headphones for monitoring while recording. I do NOT want to be tethered to the recorder when an interesting bird shows up and I need to reposition myself to get a better look/photo, often in a hurry. All listening takes place at the computer after the field session is over.

So the setup includes a sensitive omni-directional microphone to record the ambient background along with the occasional ringers. Power the whole shebang off a beefy 38,800 mAh USB battery pack and its time to go record.

Note that this setup is suited for my patch style of birding where setting a microphone on a tripod is appropriate. For mobile recording I expect a recorder with or without shotgun microphone is the better way to go so I include background on such microphones later on as well.

KJS 04/2025

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