On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Rob Saecker wrote:
> Any suggestions as to specific mikes to buy? I'd love to get a
Sennheiser,
> but don't have to $$. I already have a Sony Pro Walkman, but no mike.
>
[snip]
> And I was wondering why one couldn't use a plastic salad bowl as a
> reflector. There are the problems of mounting the mike, and holding the
> whole setup, that I haven't thought through yet, but I imagine they're
> solvable. Any thoughts?

The salad bowl question is easier to answer - chances are it will help a
little, like a cardboard cone, but not much, because it won't be a true
parabola. Parabolas are useful because they are SO directional. If you
point the parabola at a bird, the sound hitting all parts of the dish is
reflected onto a very tight spot, maybe only an inch or two across. Put
the microphone in that spot and you might get 100 fold amplification.
Point the parabola 5 degrees to the left, you might get no amplification
at all. The salad bowl will certainly reflect some sound towards the
mike, and will block sound from behind the bowl, but it's unlikely that
ALL the sound will be reflected to the mike. You might get 2 or 4 times
amplification of the bird, and equal amplification of anything within 20
degrees of the bird, which is a help, but not (in my opinion) worth
rigging up the bowl and carrying it in the field. You could get the same
benefit by figuring a way to get just a few steps closer to the bird.

As to a cheap mike, a grad student in the lab I work in bought a cheap
(~$60), fairly sensitive (so you don't need a pre-amp) mike. It's not
terribly directional (despite the "shotgun" label), so you pick up your
own footsteps and other birds/cars/people in the neighborhood, but you can
certainly hear the focal bird OK. If you e-mail me personally, I'll dig
it up and send you the make and model, although you might do just as well
to pick up a discount musical equipment catalog and pick one that looks
good to you.

What having a less than perfectly directional mike means is that you have
to fall back on your field skills - if you know a bird well enough to get
a mike close to a favorite singing perch, you can get exquisite recordings
without an expensive mike. I saw a slide show by Greg Budney of Cornell
about the history of bird song recording - one of his slides was from the
fifties or sixties, of a dipper perched on one of the 'salt-shaker' mikes
of the day, singing away. According to Greg, that recording is still the
best one ever made of a dipper song (just try to avoid the sound of
rushing water in the background any other way!).

Chris Hill
Everett, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu