Audio-Technica - BP4025

Clippies are fine for a bit louder sounds, but not for what I imagine quiet forest sounds are like. For extremely quiet sounds, ones that you can't hear yourself, you should look into large diaphragm mics. I use BP4025 as it works well with condensation. Not fan of its stereo image, but it's fine. You shouldtn't get any studio mics for that. They might sound much nicer, but moisture condensating on the mic would make most of such mics unusable – this happens. F3 has a noticable noise floor too, it will be your main limitation when getting better mics. Mic will also need wind protetcion, so you should consider that too.

Having read through a lot of the suggestions (including XY pairs), I might suggest an effective, simple and reasonably inexpensive option is the RODE NT4 (essentially two NT-5s in a single body). I haven't used mine much so went looking for others' opinions which are generally v favourable. However note these reservations from one user who considered it otherwise very capable: 1. ⁠It's very sensitive to handling and wind noise (like any cardioid condenser, and true omnis are much better in this regard) and will generate huge amounts of sub rumble if it's not isolated properly with a good blimp and shockmount, and even then it often needs a steep high pass filter to clean up the lows before the signal hits your inputs. This sensitivity made it unusable for field recording for me, except when there was no wind and it was mounted on a stand. Hand-held it is very unhappy. 2. ⁠Unless you are recording very close sources, it has a narrow stereo pickup. It's advertised as having an XY arrangement, but the capsules are at 90 degrees which narrows the pickup compared to the ~110 degrees which is traditionally what the XY technique is considered to be. Recordings of distant atmospheres come out sounding very very narrow. 3. ⁠Running it on a 9V battery results in radically worse performance than using 48V phantom (higher noise and lower output). 4. ⁠The included XLR 5-pin to 3.5mm jack adaptor contains a pad circuit which when combined with the battery power mode drops the level even further, making it feel like you're using a low output dynamic mic. 5. ⁠It's heavy as hell. I replaced mine with an Audio-Technica BP4025 which is the same basic idea but quieter, lighter, higher output, wider stereo image, less rumble problems, and an integrated high pass filter (switchable). http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/5bbed15003fe56a2/index.html

the audio technica BP4025 is nice in this type of scenario - sitting in public spaces , capturing a wide and deep soundfield - i've used one since 2011 (with an oade-modded marantz recorder) and i've always been really happy with the results. it's a stereo x/y mic.