Returning to our White-crowned Sparrow example, we now have a sound file that looks like this: So, we will instead create a shorter buffer that ends immediately after the Chestnut-sided Warbler song, creating a clean one-second buffer before the first Black-and-white Warbler song:

If we included a three-second buffer in this case, the loud songs of the other two warbler species could create confusion for a listener. However, the prominent songs of two other warbler species (Mourning Warbler and Chestnut-sided Warbler) occur shortly before the Black-and-white Warbler song: In the sound file below, the target species, Black-and-white Warbler, begins singing near the 11-second mark: In some cases, it is not possible to create a clean three-second bufferof ambient sound immediately before the first target sound. In our White-crowned Sparrow recording, there are about three seconds of additional audio that we will delete:Īfter trimming the beginning of your recording, go ahead and do the same thing at the end of your recording-look for the last sound from your target species, include a three-second buffer of ambient sound after that sound, and then trim any additional audio after the buffer. But if there is any additional audio before the buffer, go ahead and delete it.

In a case like this, you should include this three-second segment of ambient audio in the final sound file that you upload to eBird. Looking at the waveform of this recording, we see that the three seconds that are highlighted are “clean audio,” with no recordist noise or prominent, potentially confusing background species. The first step is to find where the first sound from the target species occurs and highlight the three seconds immediately before that sound: Below is a single sound file, without any pauses, with six songs from a White-crowned Sparrow:

If you have a single sound recording that you’d like to upload to an eBird checklist, it can be prepared in just a few easy steps. Continue on for a step-by-step demonstration of how to edit recordings for upload.

Audacity is a free sound editing software that works well for editing audio recordings for submission to eBird and the Macaulay Library, although it lacks several features found in Audition and Wavelab, such as dual viewing of waveforms and spectrograms and smooth filtering.

Recording from phone to wavelab 7