Written by WGNO ABC26 News |

Fears of a UFO sighting over Covington are sending all eyes upward. ABC26 News Reporter Vanessa Bolano says it's no a case of alien beings, but rather creatures of habit.

The sight of a UFO had a Covington neighborhood puzzled for four weeks.

Kaitlynn and Jonathon exclaimed, "I couldn't really tell if that was birds or aliens!"

Then ABC26 cameras zeroed in on the object and found nothing more than a pack of birds, but the interest didn't die down there. Curiosity grew over why these birds fly the same path, in the same pattern, every night, at the same time.

We turned to the experts at Audubon Zoo who suggested one possibility was that something, like a light, is scaring the birds at the same time each night.

Brenda Walkenhorst, Director of Education at Audubon Zoo, says, "Since we do live in Southern Louisiana and there's a lot of sources of water, we also have a lot of water fowl that, maybe, they are getting scared and so they are moving at night."

Walkenhorst says it's a myth that birds do not fly at night. She says most people are just not looking towards the sky once the sun goes down.

Another idea is that the birds might be Egrets or Ibises. They live in the New Orleans area, and they usually feed in one spot during the day and fly back to their nesting area to rest.

A third theory is that the birds are Geese, which are migrating North now. These birds don't need to see at night because they rely on the Earth's magnetic field, which means that it is a different group of Geese flying over the same area every night.

Walkenhorst adds, "What's really cool about Covington and actually right here through the zoo is that we're on a migratory path, so we know the same flocks of birds will come through here once or twice a year."

So if they are Geese heading North for the summer, expect to see them again this time next year, flying over the same Covington neighborhood once again.

Experts at the zoo plan to go to Covington to check out the birds. They are a little puzzled because some of the clues are unusual behavior for the most likely species.