To facilitate the study of the wireless sensor network for demanding acoustic monitoring of long distance sources, we recently have also started working on the development of a new generation of wireless acoustic sensor network platform using the Stargate nodes. The 400 MHz PXA-255 XScale processor and the 64 MB SDRAM provide the Stargate platform a decent processing capability. The VX Pocket 440 sound card with four external microphones are attached to each Stargate node through the PCMCIA slot for acoustic data acquisition. We use highly-sensitive external microphones with low self-noise. The VXPocket 440 sound card supports data sampling up to 48 KHz in 24 bits. Each Stargate node also has a flash interface to connect a 802.11 card for wireless communication. The Stargate-based platform is for the acoustic monitoring of woodpeckers in the James Reserve and the like.