Image of Extremely Rare Bird Captured in Oregon Has People Awestruck
It's a big day for bird lovers in the United States. Michael Sanchez from Oregon happened to be at the beach recently when he snapped a photo of a rare sighting — a Blue Rock Thrush — a breed of bird that's never been photographed here in the United States.
Call it luck or call it good timing, but Sanchez happened to get the super rare shot that would make most bird watchers envious.
Sanchez, a band director at Sky Ridge Middle School in Camas, Washington, was at Hug Point Falls near Cannon Beach when he pulled out his camera, KGW 8 reports.
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“I’m very, very beginner. I got my first camera in April," he told the news outlet. Sanchez doesn't seem to be a bird enthusiast himself, but he could tell there was something special about a bird he snapped a photo of.
"To me, it looked like a little bird with black feathers. When I got home, I saw beautiful colors," he explained. Blue Rock Thrushes have a blue back and chestnut front.
It wasn't just a pretty bird. This was an extremely rare sighting. It's believed to be the first time that a Blue Rock Thrush has been seen in the United States.
"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," Brodie Cass-Talbott, senior educator at Bird Alliance of Oregon, explained to the news outlet.
He added that this is probably the rarest bird that's ever been seen in Oregon.
ABC World News Tonight's David Muir said that Sanchez originally shared the photo hoping to get help identifying the animal.
"Before I knew it, I had folks from birding associations getting in touch with me, asking about the bird," he told the news anchor. "It's been a wild ride."
Enthusiasts have started flocking to the state park hoping to get a glimpse of the bird themselves.
It's not clear why the bird ended up in Oregon, but Cass-Talbott said they have a theory.
"The leading theory that this bird was migrating, encountered a storm, got blown out to sea, and potentially found a passing ship headed to the United States," he said.
It was an unexpected find, but one that Sanchez is so happy that happened.
"What I'm mostly happy about is this brings a little bit of joy and a little bit of beauty to everybody's lives," he told David Muir.
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