ripperwings are already circling before you notice them - that is the first thing to understand. Wingspan reads corvid until it drops fifty metres and you recalibrate. If it circles twice, leave the area: it is not circling because it is lost.

Hellsborough's deep winter has a specific name: the bleak. Frost hard overnight, the murk thickened with cold, nothing comfortable to say about the conditions for as long as it lasts. Worth going up onto Wadsley and Loxley commons anyway - something up there takes the weight of it, even when the ground is trying to break your ankles.