There did seem to be a bit of a spring rush end of jan,first few days of feb.with 4 of our Sussex big cats showing well.Ok,so maybe the Offham cat doesn,t actually seem to have a,strictly speaking,winter holding area but the Midhurst and Horsham cats have acted as predicted.I,ll start with the Midhurst cat and as already blogged it moved west from it,s winter holding area of Lavington Heath/Goodwood forests/Heyshott and passed north of Heyshott(to be seen in a tree)presumably heading to the Iping area and maybe a little more north.The Horsham cat has been moving steadily south out of St.Leonards forest where it apparently spent the last 3 months (blogged 11.12.2010)The Steyning cat showed up at Lancing on the 29th for the first time since the october sighting at Wiston though i would not dare to hazard a guess where she has been all winter as these open downland cats don,t show the same form as the Hinterland ones proved by the Offham cat who was sighted on Kingston ridge in the 22nd and has been popping up her pretty little head occassionally all winter but then this is typical of first year females(i will explain my theory on this in a later blog)
The one that sticks out though is the Ashdown forest cat not actually seen but has been trimming out the local fallow(typical prey of huge males)with the evidence found.Coughing was heard here end of jan and a fellow researcher managed to retrieve several good sized pawprint plaster casts,seen with the deer slots and we all saw them at the Talk nite recently in Lewes.
So,my theory is that in october when the mad rush gets finished by final leaf fall there then follows 3 months when most cats are strictly crepuscular/nocturnal.They have long,long dark nights to get their hunting done and the dusks are very short,only the most visible of cats get seen.They emerge when the duck are flighting which is very late into dusk and so unless a person is right on top of them they won,t get seen.Humans divide the year up into 4 parts and so do animals but in slightly different ways.Spring starts end of jan unless cold weather holds it back.There is a different smell in the air and in a mild start like we are having this year the grass is growing already and they could,not all,but some of the cats be positioning themselves ready for the rabbiting season when the young rabbits are born which varys in it,s start from year to year.This year it was bang on cue being just after Valentines day(see the connection?)last year it wasn,t until the start of april.When the young rabbits are in full flood literally every predator is out gorging themselves on them and i just can,t see why the big cats would be any different.For a start the roe and fallow deer have been moving right out onto the arable crops nipping the tips off the winter wheat and so are harder to catch being out in the open,they no longer spend vast amounts of time in the forestry blocks with finds of deer carcases over the years always tailing off in febuary.It,s this time of year when i,ve found the most fox carcases with cat kill signs especially in a late bunny breeding year like last year and the year before,this year i would expect the foxes to take a bit less of a hammering unless a cat has cub/s and she,ll take them along with anything else she can get hold of.That rush of sightings did occur on the moonless nights when travelling rather than hunting can be more on a cats agenda but what usually happens is that as the year progresses there won,t be that much of a peak until late july which is 6 months time and 3 months before the october migration.I can find no patterns though in the april/may time but i suppose that means this time of year is patternless or i,ve just overlooked the obvious........
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