Birds, balloons or airborne clutter?

[Giddierone]

I saw this on my yesterday. Above Wormwood Scrubs in London, at 15:56. It's barely visible on camera but you can just about make out a dozen or so white dots that appear high in the sky, well above the height of local helicopter traffic. From my POV they didn't appear to move much in relation to each other, so I thought it could be balloons held in an area with no wind because I couldn't see any wings. But maybe they're gulls with white bellies just hanging out and gliding? I watched for about 5 mins and this is the best my phone could do to capture it.

I wonder if these kinds of things are what people believe are drones or orbs?

Original video. (you have to view it full screen to see anything and the YouTube compression doesn't do it any favors)


But, here's a contrasted adjusted screen shot.

and a black and white cropped section with heavily adjusted levels. The movement is my panning the camera up and down—they didn't appear to move.

 

[jarlrmai]

Gulls are just mostly all white underneath, classic countershade camouflage in the animal kingdom

Whatever they are they are impossible to see in your YT video on my screen.

From your screen grab they they look just like gulls high up to me

 

[Mick West]

They look like birds, in your B&W video they do move relative to each other, which balloons would not.

 

[Ravi]

I would go with the bird/gull hypothesis too. I have seen it myself, these large gulls can ascent quite a bit when the thermals are right. And with the right sun angles and clear weather enhancing it.

 

[Giddierone]

They look like birds, in your B&W video they do move relative to each other, which balloons would not.

I had a second camera with me, an old Panasonic DMC-LX5. It doesn't have a viewfinder and the screen is cracked so these were the best I could manage, fully zoomed in. You're right they do move in relation to each other, but I watched them for a few minutes and couldn't see any bird-like behaviour.

Here's a hard mix of both photos as layers, showing there were quite a few things there. (only count half the dots).

 

[Eburacum]

I remember a funeral where the mourners released a couple of hundred balloons. Once they got above a certain height they almost completely disappeared, but you could just about catch a glimpse of them every now and then. On a still day, a bunch of balloons might hang about for quite a while without showing any signs of bird-like behaviours.

 

[Giddierone]

Yeah, I think this must have been balloons now. They appear a uniform size and some even appear a different colour. I didn't see any movement like birds swooping and changing direction. I wonder if it caused any UFO reports that day.

I know this is an old Facebook post from 2019 but it seems Wormwood Scrubs (which also has a model aircraft flying area) is a launch site for hobbyist balloons.