Sighting in Perpignan, August 28, 2024

At about 3:30 a.m., the witness was in their garden when five white points of light went past. They moved silently in a V formation along a straight path from the northeast to the southwest. After roughly five seconds, the group disappeared behind a tree. There was only one witness and no photo or video was taken, so GEIPAN rated the case's consistency as medium.

What struck the witness as odd was how regular the formation was and how identical the five lights looked, which gave the impression of a single large object rather than five separate ones.

The investigation concluded that this was most probably a group of white storks briefly lit up by the city's lights. Between 24 August and the start of September, an unusually large number of these birds had stayed in Perpignan and the Pyrénées-Orientales department, as several local media outlets reported. The witness's home lies on the Perpignan–Villeneuve-de-la-Raho axis, which matches the path of the five lights. The witness seems to have considered this explanation themselves, since they wrote in the questionnaire that they did not want to be told they had seen a flight of storks. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable observation of a group of birds.