Was it a bird? Was it a plane? Or was it something altogether more sinister?

Those were the questions facing a businessman who was left scratching his head after seeing three mysterious grey objects in the sky over Dereham on Monday evening.

The man - who did not want to be named - noticed something amiss when he stepped into the back garden of his home for a cigarette at about 7,40pm.

The teetotaler described seeing three grey disc-like objects with an orange tinge in formation, slowly moving in a south-west direction.

He said: 'At first I thought it was three geese. They were in formation like planes - it was two at the back and one at the front. They started to go a lot quicker and the orange glow was a lot brighter, and two split off to the left and one to the right.

'I mentioned it to my wife. I said 'I'm not going mad but you will never guess what I've just seen'. I don't know what it was.'

The entrepreneur, who said he has no beliefs about the existence of UFOs, reported his experience on the website uk-ufo.co.uk.

In response, Tony Doyle reported seeing three similar, silent objects in the sky over Little Budworth in Cheshire the previous night.