The usual deep winter lull in bigcat sightings generally perks up again in late january and this year is no exception.
I will explain the last 3 days in timeline format from my viewpoint so you may get the jist of the bizarreness of it all.Saturday is usually daughter day but i wasn,t due to pick her up until much later than normal until 2.30pm so a walk in the brisk northerly wind on the downland ridge was a priority.1pm finds us at the point above a 10 acre block of gorse stuck onto the steep sidehill where i always look at it thinking what a nice piece of lying up cover that it would make for a bigcat and then look southwards where the downs bow out to the sea creating a large block of say 5 by 5miles of classic rolling downland where i,ve gathered numerous bigcat evidence in the past and where there has been a heck of a lot of sightings.Sunday and it,s time to lift 1 of the trailcams from it,s spot nestling at the foot of the downs, 5 miles further to the west,because the recent wet weather we,ve had has flooded all the fields pushing most of the deer to higher ground and presumably the bigcats which hunt them have followed.
Meanwhile i get a text from Sussexbigcatwatch chairman which mentions a sighting on the very ridge,at the very spot where i was yesterday at 5ish,late into dusk,usual thing big,black creature heading south.By the time i got the message it was too late to get there so i just walked around the downland top where i was hoping to spot the woodcock flighting in to their favourite fields and so they did and i got some excellent views of 3 of them at 5.14pm in the by now dim light.While standing there quietly with the dogs on the leads as it was near a road they suddenly went on "cat-mark"which is,for them,heads slunk,tails flagging,serious,bullish and straining at the leash but not actually wanting to run off as such,with the odd low whine.Thinking it might be a farm cat it was too dark by now to see any different so we walked down home.Tonight another sighting has come in,the place just up the road from where i was standing watching the woodcock but on friday morning this time very big,brown(not many of these)boxy,otterlike face sat in full daylight in a field on it,s haunches,coincidence or what?I thought.But it gets even more weirder for it,s in the very same field that i investigated a sighting(black one)a year ago,jan 4th,it was actually spotted across the road but i followed the line from where it was said to have come from,checked the wire fence and found some black fur about an inch long(sadly "lost" at the lab awaiting analysis)Anyway back to the present and that,s 1 day and 5 miles apart,2 different cats spotted.They could be connected, maybe a male and female,the brown cats do seem to be a lot bigger quite often and i,ve reasoned that they could be males ,quite what they are doing so close together a day apart is another subject and i,ll present more evidence for this in due course.........The picture shows these native ponys looking towards the downland ridge of one of these sightings,taken in december..............
