Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's Neil's flying machine

Actually, they were taken with a four propeller-drone aircraft and camera cobbled together by Cleobury Mortimer IT administrator Neil Vanes.

Mr Vanes, 38, spent about £500 on the parts and put them together in about a week at home.

Since then he has been taking advantage of the recent good weather and clear skies to build up a photo library of hundreds of shots of the Shropshire countryside, as well as beaches in Cornwall and above the factory where he works at Tydenbrooks in Martley, near Worcester.

"It all started at the end of last summer," said Mr Vanes, at home in Furlongs Road. "I had seen a lot of aerial photos on YouTube and websites and thought 'wow that looks quite cool' and wondered how people were getting these photos, so I looked into it.

"I have built computers and upgraded IT before but never anything that flies."

The family home, where Mr Vanes lives with girlfriend Joanne, stepson Zack and two-year-old twins Lucas and Eden, doesn't have the atmosphere of an IT workshop where experimental flying objects, which require a lot of trial and error, are being built.

Yet, that's exactly what's been happening.

"There are websites and forums and a lot of blogs people have put up on how to build the things," said Mr Vanes, placing his quadcopter on the table.

"You can buy these off the shelf but they are a lot more expensive. The way I built it you buy parts from different stores and keep adding to it.

"You get to spend hours and hours playing around with it. It's never really finished, you can always add to it."

This is Mr Vanes' second attempt at a drone aircraft. The first, built last summer, lacked control and stability.

But this version has ironed out those problems, and since April has been his eye in the skies.

To make it, he bought a frame, four motors, each with about 1kg of thrust, propellers, an electronic speed controller (ESC), a flight control box and a global positioning system (GPS) controller.

The GPS allows the device to hold its position in the air and automatically fly back to its take-off point.

The key part of the project is a small action camera, which can take pictures up to six megapixels and shoot full HD video.

The drone weighs 1.3kg and is about 45cm from rotor to rotor. It reaches speeds of about 30 miles an hour and could potentially fly two miles into the air although laws restrict users from flying drones "out of sight".

Mr Vanes revealed his next step is to try to fit a better quality camera to the drone, as well as a device to provide auto-stabilisation.

"I want to try and make this a bit more professional," he added. "This is still really a hobby, but over the next couple of years I would like to invest more money in getting more professional results out of it."

However, with more and more people using drones, he is careful to ensure he flies safely.

After all it only takes one person acting dangerously, such as flying in built-up and crowded areas, to ruin it for the rest.

"It is a 1.3kg object hovering in the sky," he said.

"You should not be stupid with it."

Every time he goes out flying, "at least one person" stops him and asks questions about his aircraft.

It is clear Mr Vanes may have started something that could catch on, and next time Cleobury Mortimer residents think they have spotted a UFO, rather than running in fear, they should probably look up to the sky and say "cheese".