{"id":2240,"date":"2010-07-19T22:55:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T04:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=2240"},"modified":"2010-07-23T11:48:20","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T17:48:20","slug":"the-microphone-you-already-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/2240","title":{"rendered":"The Microphone You Already Own"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine days ago, Eric Ripma found an Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush singing on territory in Spearfish Canyon, South Dakota.\u00a0 Assuming the bird is wild and arrived under its own power, it is furnishing a jaw-dropping record — only the third north of the Mexican border, apparently, over 1200 miles<\/strong> farther north than the species has ever been known to venture before.\u00a0 (See Doug Backlund’s photos here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Right now I’m in a hotel in Newcastle, Wyoming, on a trip to chase the Nightingale-Thrush, but that’s not why I felt it was blogworthy.\u00a0 Rather, I wanted to call attention to a blog entry by somebody else who saw the bird a few days ago.\u00a0 Cyrus Moqtaderi’s post<\/a> is mostly about the guilty pleasures of chasing rare birds,\u00a0 but with a passing remark he sent a shiver down my spine:<\/p>\n

I made a few rudimentary audio recordings with my camera’s microphone<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cyrus posted some of this audio to his blog; click on the link above and listen to his recording.\u00a0 Considering that it was the audio track of a video made with what he called a “dinky point and shoot camera,” it’s really quite excellent.\u00a0 It’s not going to win any awards from snobby audiophiles, but for the purpose of documenting a sound heard in the field, it’s surprisingly good.<\/p>\n

These days, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of birders own a camera capable of taking a short video with an audio track.\u00a0 That is to say, most birders own a camera with a microphone in it.<\/p>\n

That bears repeating: most birders own a microphone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On a weekly basis, people write me asking for my recommendations when it comes to a cheap starting kit for recording bird sounds.\u00a0 Also on a weekly basis, I’ve receive mystery bird sounds sent to me for identification in camera-recorded videos.\u00a0 It took me until now to realize that the second phenomenon might provide a partial answer to the first.\u00a0 Maybe they won’t produce high-definition audio, but if even half of birders’ digital cameras have the power to match what Cyrus’s camera did, then these built-in camera recordings could help to fill a key gap in Joe Birder’s toolbox.<\/p>\n

My ability to identify bird sounds mushroomed when I began recording audio.\u00a0 There’s something about listening to a recording that you yourself<\/em> made in the field that really helps set the mental glue, so to speak.\u00a0 For this purpose, a camera video would work just as well as an expensive parabolic microphone.\u00a0 Granted, it may not be the most efficient use of your memory card, but then memory’s cheap nowadays, isn’t it?\u00a0 At the end of the day, if you’re really interested in audio, then by all means buy a recorder — the Olympus VN-5200PC<\/a> is hard to beat for the price — but if you’re in the field for other reasons and find yourself in sudden need of an audio capture,\u00a0 remember your camera.\u00a0 It may be good for more than just boring old visuals.<\/p>\n

Wish me luck on that Nightingale-Thrush!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nine days ago, Eric Ripma found an Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush singing on territory in Spearfish Canyon, South Dakota. Assuming the bird is wild and arrived under its own power, it is furnishing a jaw-dropping record — only the third north of the Mexican border, apparently, over 1200 miles farther north than the species has ever been known to venture before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,20],"tags":[156,155],"class_list":["post-2240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment","category-recording","tag-catharus-aurantiirostris","tag-orange-billed-nightingale-thrush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions\/2256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}