Are you ready to record this Orchard Oriole’s songs? (photo by Paul Konrad)

Recording bird sounds with your smartphone is actually pretty easy. The best and simplest way to record bird sounds is to download a free recording app, which is easy to use. The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provides information about how to configure several recording apps for Android and iOSphones. Once you download an app onto your smartphone, just configure your settings once and you’re all set. The best of the recording apps have seamless sharing to transfer recordings you make from your smartphone to your computer.

The Macaulay Library recommends choosing an app that lets you record uncompressed .wav files. That’s technical speak for an audio format that provides the highest quality and most accurate copy of wildlife sounds. It’s also the format used by sound archives dedicated to long-term preservation of audio recordings.

To learn more about how to record birdsongs using your smartphone, see the blog presented by Kathi Borgmann for the American Birding Association’s “aba blog,” at http://blog.aba.org/2018/12/a-better-and-simpler-way-to-record-bird-sounds-with-smartphones.html