Microphone for birdsong recording on iRiver H120

[winterdune]

Hello all - this is my first post and I am not a technically minded person so please bear with me!  I recently purchased a used iRiver H120 and immediately replaced the battery (an operation which went smoothly, thank goodness) and installed Rockbox.  

I want to use the H120 to record bird calls so was imagining that I could simply use my old camcorder directional rifle mic (a very cheap one) which I have used relatively successfully with a Sony MD recorder.  However the mic does not do as well in the iRiver - I think I need something with a higher gain/more sensitivity to quieter sounds, as the results I got were very quiet. Pushing up the gain to max on Rockbox gives very hissy results.

I am a total novice at microphones but through reading it seems I need either a better mic with higher gain or a pre-amp setup.

The trouble with the pre-amp idea is that I cannot find a reasonably cheap one which runs off batteries, and also using one will start to make the setup a bit cumbersome for field recording.

So can anyone recommend a decent mic (directional)?

Or can anyone tell me the technical specs I need to be looking for when I am considering a mic?  

And finally a silly technical question: is the battery in a powered mic used for pre-amping the signal, or for something else?? (You can see I don't know much, can't you?). If so, do I just need to buy a mic which takes a lot of batteries???

Thanks for your patience!

Sean

[Chronon]

It might be worth heading over to the TapersSection forums for field recording advice -- as opposed to advice about Rockbox's recording capabilities.

I am also a novice in this area.  But from the discussions that I have read on those forums I would guess that you'll probably need a preamp for recording soft sounds like bird calls.  Though, if the MD recorder gave you tolerable results then a simple battery box might do the trick for you.

The Wikipedia article on microphones has a nice enumeration of types of microphones commonly in use as well as basic principles of operation.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone#Microphone_varieties

[petur]

yup... taperssection is a nice source of info

On the other hand, most of the visitors there don't exactly use cheap equipment. Maybe the pre-amps of Chris Church fall within your price range

[TaperChuck]

yup... taperssection is a nice source of info

On the other hand, most of the visitors there don't exactly use cheap equipment. Maybe the pre-amps of Chris Church fall within your price range

Yeah, just search for Church Audio at www.taperssection.com. I'll bet he can provide a low cost/ high quality pre-amp solution for you.

[dreamlayers]

Any suggestions on a suitable preamp circuit I could build?  I'm also interested in recording birdsong.