Michael Sanchez Made Birding History With His Photos Of Rare Blue Rock Thrush

I could never imagine finding one of my favorite poems, "The Bluebird", written by Charles Bukowski, in physical form, but that's exactly what happened when I saw the blue rock thrush.

Michael Sanchez was lucky enough to spot this very rare ocean blue bird on the Oregon coastline, which happens to be only the 2nd sighting of the bird ever in North America.

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Michael Sanchez is a 41-year-old musician and school band director. He bought his 1st camera just a month ago for landscape photography. “I’m just a beginner photographer, and I wouldn’t consider myself a birder at all. I always watch birds when they are out, and I even had some pet birds years ago, but never thought I’d be diving headfirst into something like this,” explained Sanchez.

He was taking some photos of the waterfall at Oregon’s Hug Point at sunrise when he suddenly spotted a little bird hopping around: "After I was finished with the waterfall, I turned around and I see this bird, and it was still in the morning before the Sun had really gotten over the rocks. I said, ‘Well, that’s a cute bird, I’m going to just take a picture of it, see if it does something cute'. It was a very patient model for me. It stood on the sand there for a minute or two, and I got my settings dialed in. I was able to compose that shot, make a nice composition out of that shot, and then it flew up on the rocks for another moment or two, and then it went away. Really, I was just trying to practice using the camera on something other than the falls at that point.”

After some days, when Sanchez was reviewing his photos from the trip to the coast, he noticed something unusual. “I thought, ‘Oh wait, this is not an average black little bird at all.' The colors were very apparent to me. I thought, ‘Oh, well, this is something different, for sure,'” shared Sanchez.

Michael had never seen anything like it before. From the bird's unique blue and chestnut colors, it looked very similar to a male blue rock thrush and as it later turned out, Sanchez may have set a birding record, since the last unofficial sighting in North America of this type of bird was only in 1997.

Still not quite realizing what he had seen, Sanchez decided to share his photos on social media and see what happened. One of his friends sent the photos to bird enthusiasts they know, and then everything snowballed. From the online birding communities to the local news, people were so excited about the discovery that they tried to see the bird for themselves.

"Several of us searched up and down the surrounding coast today, but unfortunately some really strong winds made it difficult and unlikely the bird was out in the open. I may have heard it briefly on Arcadia Beach, but it wasn’t a sure thing due to the wind and I didn’t hear it again," shared some commentators after the published news.

“We live in a beautiful world. We have beautiful birds, beautiful landscapes, and so I think if this encourages people just to take a little bit of notice of what’s going on around them, and whether it’s a little bird or something else, I think that’s a great thing,” explained Sanchez.

Four days later, there was another blue rock thrush sighting at the Farallon Islands off the San Francisco coast. The starling-sized bird with thrush-like behavior and sapphire blue upper parts was first observed at the base of Murre Blind hill on and off for over two hours until sunset.

While it's still unclear whether this was the same bird or another bird, the experts are trying to figure out how it was possible to make it so far from its home: "Maybe this bird individually just has faulty navigation. It may have gotten lost, and then trapped in a strong wind system. Or it may have hitched a ride on a ship," Brodie Cass Talbott from the Bird Alliance of Oregon and the Oregon Birding Association supposed, trying to find the answer.

The blue rock thrush breeds in southern Europe, northwest Africa, and from Central Asia to northern China and Malaysia and is the official national bird of Malta.

This unusual bird sighting in North America has been a reminder of how unexpected and fascinating birding can be: “It’s always neat for us to see how big the world is and how incredible these creatures are,” shared Brodie. "This really has opened my eyes. I guess I’m a birder at this point,” added Sanchez.

While people are still trying to solve the mysterious appearance of the blue rock thrush on the Oregon shoreline, I can't help but think that maybe this unusual, mesmerizing blue bird is just a poem that slipped out from someone's chest:

"There's a bluebird in my heart that
Wants to get out
But I'm too clever, I only let him out
At night sometimes
When everybody's asleep."