Are there ways to speed up my editing process?

I use Audacity to post-process bird recordings. After I decide what part of the clip I’m going to use, I get rid of noisy sections that don’t have bird calls or sounds. These may be sound spikes due to my movement, or perhaps some human sounds or a car beep. However, because I use the recordings for scientific research, I always keep the gaps between the bird vocalizations, so I first note the exact time that the section I don’t want takes up. I then put the cursor over some clean downtime. If it is at least as long as the offending section, I then add the time that the offending section took up to the start time and copy that section. I then navigate back to the offending section and paste the cleaner audio over it. If I don’t have enough seconds of clean downtime, I just paste sections of it onto the beginning or end of it until I do.

This is a perfect system, however, it can be very time-consuming when I have to repeat this multiple times within a single clip. Is there some way either natively or with a plugin to speed up the process? Maybe there is some way to script this. Could I define a section of clean downtime and then quickly select each section I want to replace and have some logic overwrite those sections with the exact seconds from anywhere in the clean downtime?

Punch Copy Paste ? … Punch Copy/Paste

Since you are recording bird songs, I presume you are using a field recorder. I enjoy recording birdsong too, and that’s how I do it.

Using a shock mount between a mini tripod and the field recorder will make your life so much easier. It eliminates almost all hand movement sounds.

This is the one I use, but that is not necessarily an endorsement.

Edit -works - @Trebor You have saved me countless hours!!