2001-11-18 - Bellingham, WA - Formation

cluster of peanut-brittle colored balls flying in loose formation

I've delayed reporting this, but if others have seen a similar object, I hope this can be of help. I wrote down the details the day after the sighting, so nothing is lost due to time passed.

I opened my sliding glass door to my back porch on the night/morning (11/18/2001) of the Leonid meteor shower at approximately 4:30-4:45 AM. The porch faces south. I was standing in the doorway looking up, catching 3-4 good meteor trails, when I noticed a faint, brownish-amber object (closely resembling the illustration on your site of the May 13, 2001 sighting of a dimly lit craft over Bangalore India) moving NE-SW at a slow rate of speed. It looked like an arrowhead-shaped clump of approx. two dozen or so peanut-brittle colored balls, not 100% solidly in formation, loose, but definitely organized. No sound. Whatever it was, it wasn't self-illuminated, rather it seemed to be dimly reflecting light from the town below. My best guess is that I was looking at a flock of migratory birds flying at night -- is this common this time of year in the Northwest? However, two things prompted me to make this report to you: (1) the object *did* strongly remind me of the object seen over India; and (2) I just read on the NUFORC site that someone reported seeing a (what I interpreted as a strikingly) similar object in Seattle (about 90 miles due south of me) the same night, albeit earlier.