Hi Lyn,

I listened to your Bewick's Wren recording. Very nice. From that, I
inferred that the "background noises" you're talking about are real
sounds in the environment (the other type of "background noise" is
created by noisy electronic circuitry and low-quality mics and just
sounds like "white" noise).

There are three ways to reduce the sound of the background in nature
recordings.

1) Get closer to the source. Every time you halve the distance to
your subject, its sound is increased four-fold. Meanwhile, the
background sounds stay about the same. So the result is that the
subject sounds relatively louder.

2) Get a "shotgun" style microphone that picks up sound in a very
narrow path directly in front of the mic. Sennheisers are good,
popular, and rugged. To use this, you'll need to wear headphones
because if you point the mic just a few degrees off-axis, the sound
of your subject will diminish radically. Note that shotgun mics don't
amplify the sound more than other types of mics, they just reject
sound that's "off-axis" from the subject.

3) Get a parabolic dish. This looks like the dish receiver you get
for satellite TV, only it's typically made of sturdy but lightweight
plastic so you can carry it around. The nature of a parabolic dish is
that it takes all the sound that is in front of it and focuses all
the sound energy on a "sweet spot" that's inside the dish partly back
from the rim. By placing the head of an omnidirectional mic (one with
a wide pick-up pattern) right in the sweet spot, you not only filter
out sounds behind and to the sides of the dish, but you also get a
huge amplification (about 12 dB) of the sound in front of the dish.
Again, you need to be wearing headphones to monitor what the dish and
mic are picking up. You'll be amazed at the things you hear through
the headphones that are inaudible to the unaided ear!

Solution #1 is probably unrealistic, as you're probably already as
close as the bird will tolerate.

Solution #2 is less cumbersome than #3 but you might not get a strong
enough signal unless you add a microphone preamp. Shotgun mics are
around a couple of hundred dollars or more. A good preamp might cost
about the same.

Solution #3 is the one I like and would use if I weren't already
carrying around way too much camera and lens :) A good dish costs at
least a couple of hundred dollars. I made my own but it took way too
much time to be worth the financial savings. You won't need as
specialized a mic. Nor will you need the preamp, since you'll be
getting lots of signal amplification from the dish.

A good resource for advice and equipment is Oade Brothers
(http://www.oade.com). They sell all this stuff and their site has
useful recommendations.

We also have a fabulous resource right here in the Seattle area:
Martyn Stewart of Naturesound.org. Martyn has done nature field
recordings for BBC and tons of other clients and he is one of the
premiere nature recordists in the world. In recent years he has
offered a 2-day workshop on sound recording equipment and techniques.
You might inquire if he's going to offer that again this year.

Best wishes,

Marc Hoffman
Kirkland, WA
http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/photography


At 10:02 PM 11/19/2011, Lyn Topinka wrote:

>hi all ... initially I bought a small hand-held-fits-in-your-pocket
>digital recorder to take notes with while in the field ... but I
>ended up using it for bird songs too !!! ... it was fun ... I have
>the Sony IC Recorder ICD-PX820 ... small, handheld, runs on two AAA
>batteries ... so, with Christmas now approaching I could ask Santa
>for something better perhaps ??? ... or a microphone but which one
>or which type ??? ... any other suggestions which would help
>eliminate the background noises and just pick up on the birds ??? ...
>
>if you like this stuff here's what I've gotten so far ...
>http://columbiariverimages.com/Birds/BirdSongs/index.html
>
>thanks,
>Lyn