Mystery of the giant floating pliers

Google Street View has arrived in the West Midlands – and with it a pair of giant floating pliers.

The strange discovery was made by West Bromwich resident David Muir, who decided to look up his road when the internet site went live this week.

The website provides a detailed view of every street in the country, using images captured by a special 360 degree camera mounted on top of a car.

But anyone logging on to Whitehall Road in West Bromwich are likely to find a shadow looming in the skies.Look upwards and there appears to be a giant pair of pliers about to strike a chimney of one of the homes in the terraced street.

The oddity appears to be down to a mistake by a Google technician who was making adjustments to the car-mounted camera at the junction of Whitehall Road and Compton Road. The camera snapped the pliers and they ended up on the site.

Mr Muir said: "It is a curious picture to say the least.

"I have been emailing it to friends and telling them to look upwards. It has caused a lot of amusement around here."

Google staff drove around 250,000 miles to complete the survey, which provides a fascinating snapshot of 21st Century Britain.

Images caught include children playing in the street, office workers sneaking a cigarette and drunks swigging from bottles on street corners. Google has blurred out the faces of people caught by the camera, but in many cases they remain identifiable.

In one case, a man in Suffolk was photographed no less than three times in his village as the Google car followed him around.

Bill Baldry, 63, a retired Met Office weatherman, was delivering newsletters on the day the car arrived in his home village. Mr Baldry, who lives near Stowmarket, Suffolk said he had noticed a "strange-looking car" while he was out. "I couldn't believe it when I saw the site," he added.