24/05/2021 - Hartlebury Common – Reflective UFOs Video

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Date: 28/05/2021

On 26th May 2021 I was contacted by a young lady named Crystal who had recorded two reflective UFOs hovering over Hartlebury Common two days previously. She was able to send me the footage to analyse.

Sighting Details

On the morning of 24th May 2021 at 8.08am Crystal noticed a reflective object in the sky from the kitchen window of her house on Farm Road, Stourport-on-Severn. Initially she didn’t pay much attention, but soon realised that the object was quite still and appeared to be rotating. She stepped outside the back door of her house to view it more clearly.

It was a pleasant and sunny morning with a light breeze blowing. Looking to the South East from her location she realised that there were in fact two identical looking objects in the sky. The second object was higher up in the sky and to the left of the first. They appeared to be over Hartlebury Common roughly 1.5 miles away.

The objects were either highly reflective or silver in colour. It was hard to gauge the exact shape of the objects but they looked potentially oval. They both seemed to be tumbling or rotating. To her naked eye, Crystal feels they were about 6 feet across. They were very moving extremely slowly, to the point that they almost appeared to be hovering on the spot.

Crystal began filming the objects on her Samsung Galaxy A71 smartphone using Snapchat. She filmed them for 38 seconds. During this time, the lower object had barely moved but the upper one moved to the left and was largely hidden from view behind a nearby tree.

With the objects still visible she decided to stop filming them and go into the house to put her phone on charge and send the video to her father. Once she checked outside again after a couple of minutes neither of the objects were visible.

Video Footage

Below is the video footage which Crystal took. Unfortunately the quality is not great as she could not find a way to send it me via E-Mail, it was too large, so she sent it via Whatsapp which compressed it a little:

A still of the footage from 3 seconds with the two UFOs ringed:

Here are zoomed stills of the two objects:

The same zoomed stills with edge find:

As you can see, due to the distance not much detail can be made out. They certainly appear to be solid reflective objects, oval in shape, and there is a definite rotation or tumbling motion to them which can be seen by the light reflecting off them periodically rather than constantly. They are drifting very slowly as the witness reported.

Sighting Analysis

Firstly it can be confirmed that the two objects are not distant aeroplanes or helicopters. Below is a map from 360 Radar which confirms that Hartlebury Common is not in an airway:

Here is another still from Flight Radar 24 which shows that at 8.08am on 24th May 2021 no tracked aircraft were in the vicinity. I watched for a period of time both prior to and after this time to take into account witness error or incorrect clock settings on her smartphone:

The objects do not appear to be drones. I would expect to see more visible structure to these in daylight hours, even at a distance, and drones tend to dart around much faster rather than glide very slowly, although of course they have the capability to do so. Due to the length of time they are hovering and their appearance, birds can also be discounted.

However I feel that there is a high likelihood these are two mylar balloons which have been launched in the area for whatever reason. At no point does either object perform any fast manoeuvres or sudden changes in direction which would indicate intelligent control. They drift very slowly for the duration of the footage. The apparent rotation seen can easily be explained by buffeting from air currents.

Even though it seems likely that balloons are the explanation in this case (although not yet conclusively confirmed), I would like to thank Crystal for recording the footage and sending it me to examine. If you have any information about this sighting please get in touch.

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2021