The reason for so many sightings can probably be put down to the good weather that we have been experiencing over the past few weeks and the fact that more and more people are buying mobile phones with camera's built in, as well as small digital cameras.

The wave started in early June, when a police helicopter had a close encounter with an unidentified craft as the helicopter tried to land at St Athans military base, near Cardiff.

At 12.40 am on June the 7th, the helicopter was hovering at 500 feet, trying to land when the UFO appeared and flew directly towards it. The disc-shaped craft that was covered in lights, zoomed past so close that the helicopter had to take drastic actions to avoid a collision. The three-man crew could not capture any images of the craft before it vanished over the Bristol Channel. Unfortunately, there are conflicting evidence regarding what happened next.

When the incident was first reported, a story emerged that the helicopter took chase and followed the object across the Bristol Channel, until the helicopter ran low on fuel, at which point it returned to the air force base. However, a Police statement that was released a couple of weeks later claimed that the helicopter did not chase the object at all?

A spokesman said "The chopper had to swerve sharply to avoid being hit. The guys said if they’d stayed where they were, they’d be dead – it would’ve been a direct hit. They are convinced it was a UFO. It sounds far-fetched, but they know what they saw." The source added: “After the near-collision they decided to follow it to find out what the hell it was. They belted across the Bristol Channel in pursuit, but it was too quick. They got to the North Devon coast and had to turn back because they were running low on fuel.”

Despite the array of hi-tech cameras and surveillance gear in the helicopter, the UFO somehow avoided being caught on film. The crew could not see the craft with night-vision goggles either, although it was clearly visible to the naked eye. It appears that the crew of the helicopter were not the only people to encounter a UFO in the area on the same day. A Cardiff pensioner reported that he also saw something "peculiar with lots of flashing lights."

George Withrington, of St Mellons, said he reported the sighting to police and was given an incident number. The ex-RAF glider pilot said he was sitting in his garden reading a book on the 8th of June when he spotted the object at around 4.20pm.

"I was looking at an aeroplane overhead when I spotted this thing was in the corner of my eye. It shifted direction very quickly, in the blink of an eye. I looked at it for quite a while, I was watching it for at least 10 minutes. It flew off towards the east, towards Newport."