Parabolic versus pressure-zone microphone?

Submitted May 23, 2006 by Andy Martin

I just started trying to record night migrant calls this spring.  I'm not a researcher, just doing it for fun as a part of my interest in birding.  I've been using a 20 inch parabolic dish setup and recording onto a Sony Minidisc.

One thing about the parabolic that was surprising to me before I started to use it was how tight the focus is. This could be a drawback while trying to record birds at night which do not pass directly over my set up.  I was contemplating building the pzm setup from the instructions on Old Bird.  Can anyone tell me whether a pressure zone microphone covers a wider area of sky than a parabolic?

I was hoping maybe a pressure zone microphone would generate some stronger calls (better spectrograms) from those birds which do not pass directly over the recording site.

Thanks for any input,

Andy Martin
Gaithersburg, MD