Around 1,000 racing pigeons from South Wales have tragically disappeared - devastating the owners who hand-reared them.
Up to 250,000 birds were released in roughly 50 events across Britain on Saturday - but only a small fraction have returned.
Some have been spotted as far away as Majorca - leading the day to be dubbed 'the worst in the sport's history'.
News of the freak occurrence first surfaced after it was reported that 5,000 birds had gone missing in the North East.
And now Dene Simpson, race controller for the South West Wales Federation of pigeon fanciers, has spoken of his own strife.
He told WalesOnline that a local group travelled to Swindon, Wiltshire to let around 1,400 birds go.
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But only around 200 to 300 returned - gutting the pigeon's owners.
Some in the racing community have attributed the bizarre happening to a weather phenomenon.
Dene, 39, said: "We'd let ours go from Swindon at midday on the same Saturday.
"That's a 92 mile journey with the wind behind them, so it shouldn't have taken that long.
"But, of the 1,400 that went out, only about 200 to 300 made it home.
"And when we looked on social media later on we saw that lots of other federations around the UK had experienced something similar."
Tasked each race day with deciding when and where birds are released, liaising with other federations and checking the weather situation, Dene said there'd been no warning signs that something odd was about to happen.
"The forecast had been overcast in the morning but with good visibility - by the afternoon there were clear blue skies back home in Swansea," he said.
"Which is why I think something invisible to the naked eye occurred, something that messed with the birds' internal Sat Nav and caused them to veer off course drastically."
He added that homing pigeons can navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field as a guide, but a freak occurrence such as solar storm could have ended up distorting their sense of direction.
"There was definitely something strange going on that day because there were hardly any wild birds in the sky at all beforehand, it was just dead up there.
"Personally, I've not ruled out a series of mini tornadoes being to blame."
Dene said that a fellow member of his federation, which covers the likes of Port Talbot, Pontardawe and Llanelli, has been told that one of his pigeons has since been spotted in the Netherlands - ID'd by the tag or 'life ring' around its leg.
"It's upsetting for the boys because they've reared these birds by hand, really looked after them.
"And, while money is the last thing on anyone's mind at a time like this, pigeon fancying can be an expensive hobby. Losing this many birds will have cost a fortune."
However, he added that it wasn't the first time an event like this had take place.
"Some of our older members can recall an identical unexplained happening from about 60 years ago, but that was way before my time."
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