I live in Buttfuck, Nowhere in the North. Semi-rural but with a fairly major town nearby.

Two days ago, day three of the 'lockdown', in the middle of the day, I saw an unmarked black helicopter flying low-altitude search patterns over the area.

The helicopter was not obviously military. A medium-sized commercial vehicle, I think, with skids and no external features. There were no markings or livery; it was an entirely different model to the ones used by the local police. It was searching streets, gardens, and even fields and woodland. Its speed was brisk, there was no loitering. The altitude was maybe a few hundred feet, and the search pattern looked pre-planned (they would search an area then move directly and efficiently to the next to search it) and covered the entire area. I did not see any indications of externally-mounted imaging or electronics gear.

The fact that they were covering fields and woodland pretty much nullifies the idea of harvesting data from home networks. Mobile phone data is an option. As is the possibility that they were looking for something or someone, but this seems to be contra-indicated by what appeared (to me, at least) to be a pre-planned search pattern.

Damn spooky.