Blue Rock Thrush shocks US west-coast birders

US birders were left shocked when news came to light of a Blue Rock Thrush photographed on an Oregon beach.

The bird, a male of the chestnut-bellied East Asian philippensis subspecies, was seen at Hug Point State Recreation Site early on 21 April by amateur photographer Michael Sanchez, who didn't realise the magnitude of his find at the time.

After Sanchez posted his images on Facebook, the identity of the bird was realised and the local birding grapevine went into meltdown.

Sanchez told The Oregonian: "Keep in mind I'm not a birder, at all. But one of my friends told me he thought this might be a very rare bird. And now this whole week there have been people gathered at Hug Point trying to find it."

Blue Rock Thrush at Hug Point State Recreation Site, Oregon, on 21 April 2024 (Michael Sanchez via Facebook).

The sighting represents only the second record for the American Birding Association (ABA) Area following a male seen in British Columbia, Canada, in 1997. It is, therefore, also a first for the US.

Remarkably, a Blue Rock Thrush was observed four days later in the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, California – some 900 km south of Hug Point – on 25 April. Once again, the bird was a male of the philippensis subspecies. Given the extreme rarity of this Old World species in North America, it seemed likely that the same bird would be responsible for both sightings, despite the significant distance between them. However, photo analysis reveals that the Farallon Islands bird shows subtle differences in the wing and belly feathering, meaning that the ABA Area has been treated to its second and third records of Blue Rock Thrush within the space of a week.

The Blue Rock Thrush was not the only extreme vagrant seen in the Farallon Islands on 25 April, with a Swallow-tailed Gull also photographed there. This species breeds almost exclusively in the Galápagos Islands and is a very rare straggler north to the ABA Area.