Look at those…drones?
Surprise! Curiosity. Certainty? Surprise (again)! Uncertainty. Realization. Actual certainty!
Surprise!
“Sean! There they are again!” my wife exclaimed in the driveway.
Several weeks prior to this she had seen a series of what looked like satellites moving across the sky in an organized, contiguous pattern. Then, they would reappear after a short time. We eventually attributed the objects as being a series of Starlink satellites followed shortly by another group of the same, which would explain their swift reappearance - but really just a totally new set of satellites.
“Where?! What?!” I shouted back at her, looking toward the sky.
I had never seen them when she did the first time. This time, however, I did. There were about seven or eight UFOs (I’m only calling them that because I didn’t know what they were—relax) were flying in a low, V-pattern across the sky, which I thought was strange.
Curiosity.
I do not know enough about satellites to say whether or not there are collections that travel in a V-pattern, but I have never heard of any that do. Seeing those objects moving low and silently across the sky caused us to backtrack on our original satellite hypothesis and search for another explanation. The underwhelming amount of evidence we had led us to identify the objects as UFOs satellites drones.
Certainty?
That’s right, drones. We were sure of it! It makes sense, right? Drones could easily be made to fly in whatever pattern the operator(s) want, like in a V-pattern. They would fly much lower in the sky compared to satellites. And they are completely silent. Okay, you’ve got me there—that part doesn’t make sense. That was definitely the sticking point in our identification. Unless the drones were higher than we thought, which would keep us from hearing the whirring and whining of the propellers. Yes, that makes sense! They were definitely drones!?
Surprise (again)!
“Sean, hurry! Come out here!” I heard my wife say late one night from the back patio. I quickly made my way out of the house to join her. This happened a few days after the last incident.
“What!?” I replied, inwardly hoping she had seen an owl (it’s happened before, but that another story).
“I saw them again,” she said quietly. “THERE ARE SOME MORE!” she whisper-yelled so she wouldn’t wake our neighbors as she pointed excitedly.
I saw what she did and we looked at each other perplexed.
Uncertainty.
What we had seen was another group of objects moving across the sky. Though, this time they turned and moved around one another with no specific pattern as we continued to track them moving south.
“Keep looking – see if you can find any more – I’m going to get my camera,” I told her as I quickly turned and ran back inside to get my wildlife photography setup with a telephoto lens.
When I made it back outside I learned no other signs of flying objects had appeared in my absence. We both kept our eyes toward the sky and continued contemplating what they could be—and still only drones came to mind. Then, all of a sudden, we saw another group and I quickly put my camera up to my eye, attempted to focus in the darkness, and snap a picture. It did not work out. All I captured was a streaky, blurry mess.
I prefocused on a light in the distance so my camera wouldn’t hunt for focus next time. The objects that were flying past were light enough to see with the naked eye, but difficult to focus on in the darkness. We waited a few minutes before seeing another group fly by and this time I was able to get a picture. I’ll show it here. I promise there is something in the image even though it’s very dark. It’s all we had to work with to identify these objects. It wasn’t until I retrieved the image from the memory card that things began to make more sense.
Realization.
All these sightings had been happening in September and October. Could these events happen throughout the year? We didn’t really know. Maybe we were seeing so many of them since we were able to finally enjoy being outside at night due to the cooling temperatures and lower humidity.
After being out that night in October with my telephoto setup, and capturing images that could be helpful, I downloaded them to my computer for closer inspection. It was upon processing the photo that I had my first realization. The exposure of the image was increased and it was greatly in need of noise reduction due to the subject of the photo being so underexposed and shot at 10,000 ISO. The images to follow are (1) a processed version of the originally dark capture, (2) closer crop with noise reduction applied, and (3) a black and white conversion of the cropped image to take away the distracting color cast. It will probably start to be apparent what we were seeing in the sky now.
The objects in the sky we were seeing were not satellites. Nor were they drones. They were birds!
Actual Certainty!
How did we know they were birds? Well, the pictures are pretty telling. So, if you just wanted to find out what the “UFOs” really were, now you know! Thanks for reading this far. For anyone else that wants to hear about the other things that led us to our final identification, keep reading.
Remember a little earlier I said that the sighting had been in September and October? After looking at the images and see what are most certainly birds we also remembered we were right in the path of peak fall migration. I have no idea what type of birds are in the image, but we saw many more groups that looked very similar. In the midst of all this, I also learned about a website called BirdCast, which is part of the Cornell Lab or Ornithology (they also have sites/apps called eBird and Merlin – check them out if you’re interested in birds). At the time we check BirdCast, there were tens of thousands of birds estimated to be crossing through our county. That gave us additional evidence that we had indeed seen birds. I’ll include an even further cropped version of the photo used to identify the objects as birds.
Did you know they were birds before getting through the whole blog post? Let me know!
Also, do you have any stories about unidentified flying objects seen over your house? Were you able to identify them? Leave a comment below and tell me about it.
Take care of yourselves and I wish you the best on your next photography adventure!
