OREGON, USA — Seeing birds along the Oregon coast is nothing new, but what a photographer captured a couple of weeks ago is something nobody has ever seen in North America: a rare bird that typically calls Europe and Asia home.
If there’s such thing as beginners’ luck, it’s embodied in Michael Sanchez, who’s the band director at Sky Ridge Middle School in Camas, Washington.
“I’m very, very beginner. I got my first camera in April," said Sanchez.
In late April, he snapped some photos at Hug Point Falls near Cannon Beach.
“To me, it looked like a little bird with black feathers. When I got home, I saw beautiful colors,” recalled Sanchez.
Photos of the bird — a blue rock thrush — are believed to be the first time it’s been spotted in North America, so when Sanchez posted his photos online, birders couldn’t believe what they saw.
“What makes this so exciting is that blue rock thrush breeds across Europe and into Asia, and it doesn’t breed very far north; that’s why we don’t see them in Alaska,” said Brodie Cass-Talbott, the senior educator at Bird Alliance of Oregon.
Cass-Talbott said this is probably the rarest bird that’s ever been found in Oregon.
So how did it get here? Talbott has some theories.
“The bird started migrating south from eastern Russia, and either had bad navigation or got stuck in a storm and got blown out to sea,” said Talbott.
He added that often, birds fight against the wind out in the open sea. If that happens, some birds often give up the fight and just start going with the wind.
“A lot of birds, as you can imagine, can get lost that way. Some of them might get lucky enough to find a ship or a passing boat and land on it,” Talbott said.
A rare bird who somehow got off course and landed right in our backyard is something Sanchez will not soon forget.