It’s been awhile since we added a new Beat Writer here at 10,000 Birds and I am pleased to announce that the long drought has ended. Please give a warm welcome to our newest Beat Writer, Meredith Matthews!

Meredith Matthews is a long time reader of 10,000 Birds who regularly let Mike and Corey know about cool news Meredith Matthewsstories, blog posts, and other tidbits related to birds that she found. Mike and Corey would often turn her links into short blog posts. Then, one day, Mike had the great idea of cutting out the middleman, so to speak, and asking Meredith to share her links herself! Now Meredith is the Nature News beat writer and her posts appear whenever inspiration strikes her!

When Meredith was a little girl in the New York suburbs, her dad praised her “eagle eyes,” but she didn’t see her first eagle until decades later along the Hudson River. She’s a relative newcomer to birding, but it’s already taken her to some amazing places, from Plum Island in Massachusetts where she saw baby Piping Plovers during blackfly season, to the National Aviary in Pittsburgh where the birds were not countable as lifers, but still very cool, to the streets of downtown Chicago, which she walks early mornings during migration season as part of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. She adores her new adopted home, especially because she lives in jogging distance of its birding mecca, the Magic Hedge. When she’s not poring dreamily through field guides or rescuing injured feathered out-of-towners, she’s a health and medical writer and editor—and inveterate newshound—who chronicles her experiences in the Windy City at Blog5B. Her lifer dance uses the same moves she breaks out for Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine.”

Meredith is a welcome addition to the blog and you can look forward to many interesting posts from her! And, remember, you can always keep up with our current Beat Writers schedule on the Beat Writer page.

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.