A ghost crow?

Regular readers will no doubt be aware that as well as the paranormal I am fascinated by wildlife, particularly birds. Whenever I see a bird I just have to look properly at it. Recently I noticed a crow gliding down from roof top level into a garden. It disappeared behind a high fence. Most people wouldn’t have even noticed it but I did. What is more, I was immediately struck by the feeling there was something ‘wrong’ about it. I’ve frequently seen birds like crows gliding down to the ground but this one seemed to be going down too slowly, almost floating down. So I waited for a while to watch the bird fly up again so I could get a better look.

It took a while for the crow to emerge and when it did it was behaving very oddly indeed! The bird was apparently floating around, despite not flapping its wings! A ghost crow perhaps? It soon became obvious that I had misidentified the bird completely. It turned out to be a black plastic bag. It was quite windy which is why bag was flying about. So how could I, an experienced birder, confuse the two? Well the scene was quite distant and I was indoors, so I wasn’t immediately aware of the high winds. Plastic bags don’t usually rise to roof level whereas birds do so all the time.  So expectation clearly played a part. The fact that I didn’t see the ‘bird’ take off or land, which would have been big giveaways, didn’t help. Some birders far more experienced than me have also confused inanimate objects with birds!

My sighting happened in daylight. It would have been even more convincing at twilight. I also wonder what someone might have reported if they’d seen a strange black object floating around their garden at twilight.