After a few failed attempts yesterday I finally recorded a bird song on an iPhone app called “RODE rec” and was able to post it onto an eBird list. Seems simple but it took me enough struggle to post step by step directions here. First is just the app. RODE rec was chosen because of online reviews suggesting that it is a reasonably good free app to record wave files. You can record using the phone recorder, but you get a less usable type file.

On opening the RODE rec app you will need to go through a registration process, but on future openings you’ll see something like this:

To make a new recording just click on the + icon at the bottom. Then you’ll see a screen like this:

All you need to do to record is tap the big red “Record” button, then when you are done tap on the green “Stop” button.

This much is pretty simple. I had difficult getting the recording to play. The trick is to swipe the gray band on the bottom all the way back to the left so that it resets to the beginning. After recording the gray band is all the way to the right, i.e. finished. See this screen shot below of the “finished” recording:

Compare to this one after swiping the gray band back to the far left:

Next I just emailed the recording to myself. To do this select the recording you want to send, and tap the “Upload arrow” on the upper right screen. Choose email, send the file to your self.

Then you move the recording from your email to a location you can drop and drag it to the “media” section on eBird (just like dropping and dragging or selecting a photo). One thing to note is that unlike a photo which is immediately visible on your eBird list, the audio file takes a while to be processed. My first one was able to be listened to on eBird by the next day.
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S42754617

I believe using a microphone or parabola will give a better recording, but this one with just my phone was passable and I’m pretty happy with it. Good luck. Ed