The Tascam DR-05 has a built-in pair of stereo condenser mics and a 1/8" stereo jack for an external domestic-standard stereo mic. Unfortunately, neither of these two features is very useful when it comes to wildlife recording using an external professional microphone (these are mono).

You should really look at the Tascam DR-100 or the Zoom H4N for this sort of work, as these have XLR inputs for professional microphones and 48V phantom power.

However, there is a small box (the XLR-1) made by Sony for its handheld recorder (the PCM-D50), and this would probably work with the Tascam DR-05. It has a pair of XLR inputs, a battery compartment with inverter for generating the phantom power, and a 1/8" stereo jack output. It could be a good way into using professional mics with the lower-cost type of recorders. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any noise figures, so it's not easy to say whether your wildlife recordings would be swamped by noise from the recorder's pre-amps even when using an external shotgun mic.

Thanks for the help Boswell, I"ll check into the things you mentioned.