Sighting in Toulouse, May 17, 2015

At around 11:16 p.m., a witness who was watching the night sky saw a series of lights appear, up to eight by their count, gradually forming a large V. The formation moved silently at low altitude. At one point one of the lights broke away from the group, and then everything vanished. No other witness came forward. The witness sent their account to GEIPAN through its questionnaire and was later met for a cognitive interview and an on-site reconstruction.

What made the case strange was the V shape and the order in which the lights appeared and went out. A patrol of aircraft or drones seemed unlikely at night in an urban area, and the sequence of the lights would have been unexplained in that case. The hypothesis of birds in formation, discussed with an ornithology expert, accounted for it better: gulls or ducks can fly at night at low altitude, and their pale plumage, even dimly lit by the city, can look luminous. The V entering a slightly brighter area would have made the birds appear one after another, and leaving it for a darker area would have made them vanish all at once. A bird could have briefly left the group.

However, it was not possible to understand how the neighbourhood's lighting could produce such a sharp, linear contrast at that altitude. The testimony was consistent and precise. GEIPAN therefore classified the case as B: probable observation of migrating birds in formation. This kind of explanation is recent at GEIPAN, and other past cases may in fact involve the same phenomenon.