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Fueled by domination in the field events, the W.F. West boys track and field team came away with a win at the Timberwolf Invite on Saturday in Marysville.

The boys scored 142.5 points, topping second-place Union by more than 30, and they beat several other teams from 3A and 4A.

The Bearcats took second, third, and fourth in the shot put, as Caleb Busse (43-3), Carson Smith (43-1), and Mason Dowling (42-5) all finished with marks within a foot of each other.

Busse won the discus toss with a throw of 159-4, while Dowling took third with a throw of 140 feet and Charles Lawson took fifth with a mark of 133 feet.

Lucas Hoff came out on top in the pole vault (13-9) and the high jump (6-2), and he took second in the javelin throw (146-8).

Kade Mohoric came out on top in the long jump with a leap of 19-4, which topped Goldendale’s Raymond Holycross by just half of an inch.

The W.F. West girls also performed well on Saturday, as the Bearcats took fourth. With 98 points, they finished just one point behind third-place Mark Morris and nine behind Heritage, which won.

Amanda Bennett was just one of three to throw the javelin beyond 100 feet, and she won the event with a toss of 113-10. Bennett also took second in the pole vault by clearing the bar at eight feet.

Joy Cushman was the runner-up in the 800, as her time of 2:21.85 was less than a quarter of a second longer than the winner. Ashlen Gruginski took third in the 1600 with a time of 5:29.45.

Leslie Morales came away with top-three finishes in the long jump and triple jump. She finished tied with teammate Trinity Gist in the long jump with a mark of 15-9.5, and she took second in the triple jump with a leap of 34 feet.

The Bearcats are back in action on Wednesday in Olympia at the South Sound Froshowcase.

Michael Sanchez is no birder. But the 41-year-old Vancouver man has been getting into photography. So, on a trip to the coast last Sunday, he woke up before dawn and carried his new Sony camera to Hug Point, where he hoped to snap a shot of the picturesque waterfall just after daybreak.

“I shot my pictures, then turned behind me, and I see this little bird,” said Sanchez, the middle school band director at Camas’ Skyridge Middle School. “It was still a little bit before sunrise, still a little dark, so to my eyes, it looked like a tiny bird that was black. I only realized once I got home and was processing my photos that it had this really pretty blue and chestnut color.”

After posting his photos to Facebook, Sanchez learned that his pretty bird was none other than a blue rock thrush, a native of Europe and Asia that is beyond rare in North America. In fact, bird experts later told Sanchez they believe it’s among the first times a wild blue rock thrush has been spotted in North American history, at least with this much documentation.

“Keep in mind I’m not a birder, at all,” Sanchez said. “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.”

The excitement has extended statewide.

“It’s the bird of the year in Oregon,” said Brodie Cass Talbott, senior educator and trips specialist with the Bird Alliance of Oregon, formerly Portland Audubon. “It might end up being the bird of the decade.”

According to Oregon Bird Records Committee secretary Tim Janzen, a blue rock thrush was previously spotted in British Columbia in 1997, but experts there were not sure whether it was a true vagrant — aka a bird that traveled far outside its range unassisted — or a caged bird that was released or escaped.

“These things are a moving target,” Janzen said. “Certainly the BC record is confirmed. The only question is whether the bird is wild or not. That’s a problem we face with a lot of these records, especially for the super rare ones.”

According to Janzen, the bird could have hopped on a ship, jumped to Alaska then flown down the coast, or it could have made it all the way across the Pacific.

Intriguingly, a blue rock thrush was also spotted on the Farallon Islands off California on Thursday. (And on Friday, after Sanchez’ photos had sent the local birding world atwitter, a person retroactively reported spotting a similar bird in Seaside in January, Janzen said.)

For Cass Talbott, the Farallon bird sighting presents two unlikely scenarios. Either the thrush somehow made its way from northwest Oregon to a remote island off San Francisco, 700 miles to the south, in four days. Or the first two blue rock thrush sightings to happen on the West Coast in 27 years just took place in the same week.

Janzen says that while he doesn’t speak for the entire committee, he believes the bird Sanchez photographed will be confirmed as a blue rock thrush.

“Some birds are tough to identify,” Janzen said. “This one is not. That blue back and orange front, that’s very unique. Everyone who has looked at these photos has agreed on the identification.”

He added: “It’s extremely rare.”

But if Sanchez couldn’t see the color of the bird’s plumage, why did he bother to take the picture?

“I’m new to photography, so I’m just kind of taking pictures of everything,” Sanchez said. “I figured, maybe I’ll catch a picture of it doing something cute. And it was a really good model for me. It sat on the sand for a minute or two while I adjusted my camera, then flew up to the rocks for a few more moments. I was just happy to shoot a bird. Turns out I got a bit more bird for my buck.”

Sanchez was asked to write a report for the Oregon Bird Records Committee detailing where and when he spotted the bird. If confirmed, the case will likely be taken up by a national bird rarities committee. Despite being an amateur photographer, Sanchez said birding friends said there’s no doubt about what kind of bird is in his pictures.

“To have photographs of this quality, there’s no question as to what it is,” Sanchez was told. “They just have to go through the procedures of making it official.”

After his find, is Sanchez considering adding birding to his list of hobbies?

“I don’t think I have a choice at this point,” Sanchez said. “The folks in the birding community have been so excited for me. And I’ve received such a warm welcome into their world.”

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