Using a shotgun mic with an iPhone to record birds

I'm completely lost on this page. The pictures make sense, but once names and models are thrown around, it's like trying to do math problems. I use Merlin, and Cornell, but use Merlin the most. I would like to get a microphone so I can reach a bit further, IDing songs/calls. Across the street and up the neighbor's trees is where I'd like to go. I have an older iPhone. Is there a good "plug and play" mic? I don't know if there is any way of making sounds like cars or my dogs roughhousing a bit muted. Tech is not savvy at this house, haha! I don't have a lot to spend, but this hobby brings me a lot of joy (until the Starlings start singing songs that don't belong to them).

I realize that I am coming in at least a year late to this Merlin Bird song recording discussion. One thing that I would like to emphasize about using Merlin to record bird song. There are many things built into the Merlin app itself that optimize field recording. Obviously the app has multiple recordings of each species to cover geographic differences of bird song, all of the different species of mimics. This is accomplished by the over 30 million field report submissions including the sound recordings in the Macauley Library at Cornell.Ornithology. One important addition to the algorithm that I don’t see discussed much is the addition from the German Acoustic University, As I understand it recordings of many common ambient sounds, automobiles, planes, wind noise, other animal noise, almost every outdoor noise we can imagine was included and the algorithm instructs these noises to be ignored. This works very in my experience and allows the Merlin App to concentrate on bird song.

Thanks for sharing your setup. Do you have a system that you mount all these devices on for easier handling?

I'm new to this level of birdwatching and song ID. I am so excited by all the bird calls just in my yard that I'm now able to identify with the Merlin Sound ID feature. Has inspired me to buy better quality binoculars and now I'm looking at microphones! Question: Do you have some kind of holder for your phone and mic? Thanks.

Hi Jeff. I was curious too to use a shotgun mic to identify far birds using the Merlin Bird ID iOS app. The only missing adapter on my side was the Rode SC4 TRS to TRRS, so I went to buy one. Here is the setup I tried following your setup : - Rode NTG-2 (it provides its own 48v phantom power using a AA battery inside). - XLR to TRS adapter - TRS to TRRS adapter (Rode SC4) - TRRS to Lightning (Apple's dongle) I plugged everything together, quite the same as your setup except the different mic. However the iPhone does not recognize the mic. This is because although the connectivity makes sense and the mic provides the phantom power, there is a mismatch on impedance. The impedance of the NTG-2 is 350Ω with phantom power but the iPhone is used to something higher than 1000Ω (the Apple earphones are 1600Ω from what I saw on the internet). So, in general, I think that your post makes sense on two points: 1. The connectivity makes sense. 2. The voltage makes sense (microphone provides the phantom power) However, it's missing on the third key point: 3. Impedance. This impedance discrepancy means two things: either the iPhone reverts back to the inner microphones and neglects the microphone, either the sound is very low and clipping. Maybe the situation is different with your Sennheiser ME66 microphone. Therefore, I tried another setup that work with cristal clear sound. First setup (iPhone): - Rode NTG-2 - Shure X2u (which I happenned to already had, to connect the mic to my laptop) - USB cable from the X2u to USB-A - Apple adapter USB+lightning to lightning (and not the USB without lightning to lightning one). This is because the iPhone cannot provide enough power to the Shure X2u. - An external Anker battery plugged in the Apple dongle to power the X2u. Second setup (iPad): - Rode NTG-2 - Shure X2u - USB cable from the X2u to USB-A - USB-A to USB-C adapter - iPad with a USB-C port. The iPad with a USB-C port provides enough power for the X2u. Although these two setup give cristal clear sound, they involve more things than your setup, mostly due to having a X2u that does the conversion from analog to digital instead of trying to feed an analog signal to the iPhone/iPad directly with an impedance mismatch. I am aware that there are other simpler solutions out there to adapt an XLR microphone to iPhone/iPad. I'll try my new setup soon to see how Merlin identifies farther birds now with a shotgun mic. Happy birding!