A New Gadget!

Here's my newest gadget for enjoying birds & nature: the Nature's Window 3 outdoor monitoring device! I ordered it shortly after the first of the year and it arrived last week. Six feet of microphone cord is the standard with this unit. However, because of where I planned to locate my unit, I paid for an additional 30-foot microphone cord.
Here's the microphone -- it's really tiny! I was a little skeptical of how much sound this might pick up.

After setting up the monitor and running the cord out the dining room window and across the arbor that's built over my downstairs patio, this is all you see of the unit. It's almost completely invisible except for a little bit of the cord coming from the side of the house to the arbor.

The sound quality of this Nature's Window monitor is fantastic! It picks up bird sounds from a good distance away. Because we live so close to the highway, it also picks up a fair amount of highway noise, however instead of sounding annoying, this constant background noise almost ends up sounding like ocean waves, so it's actually kind of relaxing!

What I really like about this monitor is that now I can hear the outside sounds without having to crack open a window on these dreadfully cold days! And I can't wait until spring when the cardinals start singing their cheerful songs. Once summer arrives, I'm thinking I'll probably leave the monitor turned on all the time -- what could be better than having crickets and tree frogs sing me to sleep and waking up to the songs of orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, robins and brown thrashers!