Strange video, opinions solicited (1 Viewer)

[Matt McClure]

Hi folks! I'm cross pollinating on the Internet here by seeking your opinions. The following is a video that is popular in UFO forums. Many of us think it is probably a bird. To help with this discussion I've tasked myself with soliciting opinions of experienced birders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEH1_WDldTk

The video is under 4 minutes, is infra red imaging taken from plane near the ocean shore in Puerto Rico at night. Again, this is infra red from an airplane, caught at night. It basically looks like a dot. A dot that get zooms in on a couple times. But I'm just curious what a birder would say, given its flight path and what kinds of large birds would fly around at night and eventually land on the ocean near the breakers in Puerto Rico.

Some of us think it could be a pelican or an albatross or an osprey. It is estimated by analysts to be 3-5 feet in width and traveling between 80 and 100 mph. That speed of course is not possible with birds (unless they are diving, right?) who are just cruising, as this one appears to be, before finally 'landing' on the ocean in the end.

I know this is odd, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask and I'd love to hear some thoughts. And if I need to post this in a different topic I will! Thanks so much!

 

[phil baber]

Turkey, or Black Vulture. My best guess from footage. But if it landed on the sea? Brown Pelican? Certainly has a large wingspan...

 

[Andy Adcock]

Looks like a kids balloon to me!



Andy

 

[CJW]

Hang around long enough Matt and some of the more speculative people on here will give you a definitive ID to species, age and sex.
For what it's worth I think it's a bird...

 

[Microtus]

Turkey, or Black Vulture.

Not at night!

 

[Andy Adcock]

Gulls are active at night in highly lit areas such as dock yards.....

I still think it looks wind blown as opposed to being independently driven or flying...


Andy

 

[MSA]

Just before the object lands on the sea there appear to be two separate objects, and the one then followed certainly seems to move in a bird-like manner - up to that point my money would be on a balloon. I wonder if the balloon disturbed a bird, with the latter followed after the encounter.

Shame we'll never know for certain!

 

[nartreb]

It's a UFO all right. Meaning, I can't identify it.

Video quality is too poor to say anything about the shape, other than it's probably not a perfect sphere. The shape (or angle of presentation) seems to vary from time to time, more than I would normally expect from a poor video compression. For a few seconds starting around 2:30, there seem to be two objects - almost like a reflection or shadow, except the lower object seems to be brighter.
Actually, if you look at other reflections/shadows in the video (trees at 0:51 for example) you see something similar: the image in the water is very dark but the trees are almost invisible. I have no idea what kind of recording technique would produce that effect, but then I know almost nothing about night-vision camera work.

Are you sure this is infra-red? The cars at 1:30 are casting very dark shadows, which move right alongside the cars - not leaving any time for the pavement to cool down or warm back up.

It's hard to be sure since the camera is moving, but the object's flight seems to be very steady. If it ever changes direction, it does so very gradually. There's no up-and-down motion like you'd see when a small bird flaps its wings.

Most of the time what we see is that the object is in shadow. That makes it hard for me to imagine the object as basically bird-shaped. If the aircraft making the video is located above the bird, the shadowed parts of the bird would be mostly out of view. We'd have to assume that the wings aren't visible against the background, and all we're actually seeing is part of the flank.

Anyway, since this is a bird forum, I'll point out that pelicans can be active at night.