Recoding Ambient Sounds?

[darkecho]

I live in the sticks and would love to capture some of the night time critter noises that go on. mostly frogs that act up when it rains but when you hear it mixed with all of the othe bugs like crickets and owls and stuff, its just unreal. i realy want to capture this and use it at some point but i dont know how to get myself out there with a mic and record it... other than sticking a mic out the window which doesnt seem to work very well.

I was thinking about using my laptop with a card like this
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Recording/Computer/Hardware?sku=240075

but then i wouldnt have a preamp, unless i brought along some sort of power supply but a generator would definately interfere with the sound... then i got to thinking maybe i could bring along a UPS aka computer backup battery and plug my preamp into that while i record through my laptop and that card.. you guys think that would work? i would probably use two condensors pointing opposite directions and pan them for more reaistic sound.

any thoughts? i even am contemplating building a shuttle PC and running it on the backup battery UPS so I can use my delta 44...

does anyon think the laptop card interface would have latency/not be able to keep up with the tracking? thanks!

 

[zenpicker]

Howzabout this? http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/item--ZOMPS04 I just got one - the ultimate in portability. Not much recording time, though if you upgrade your chip you get more. Combine it with a nice mike and you're most of the way there, I'd think. Dead quiet, battery-powered, no muss, no fuss. And if you want to lay in a nice gangsta rap rhythm track with your frogs, it's got that too.

BTW, if you love this stuff (by which I realize I mean, somewhat abashed, NATURE), check out some of these:

http://www.listeningearth.com.au/pages/Sounds_FABirdsong.html.

Some incredible recordings.