I was sent this photo on 9 February 2026 – it shows the carcass of a muntjac found in Ufford – I have to be vague about exactly where in Ufford. (It’s near Woodbridge, in Suffolk.) Yes, I have permission from the copyright-holder to reproduce the photo here. It shows clear signs of predation by a big cat – the spine in particular has been neatly stripped clean in a way that only a big cat could do.
The discoverer told me they’d found the corpse the previous day, then returned to it and found that there had been quite a lot more of it eaten. They also told me they’d previously come across other muntjac corpses in the area, but that they’d been in such a state of decay that they couldn’t tell whether or not these had been predated on. I hope to discuss this with the discoverer of the carcass in more detail shortly.
Just over a week before the discovery of the muntjac corpse in Ufford, on 31 January 2026, a different witness contacted me to report a sighting of a lynx-like cat seen near the golf course in the same village of Ufford.
Seen at around 2pm, with good visibility that afternoon, this big cat was described as having a “long body, leopard-like markings… twice the size of a domestic cat.. Brown, brindled, possibly white on the head. Moved like a cheetah or lynx… Smaller than a leopard, bigger than a lynx, serval-sized.” The witness saw it “50 yards away, seen for one or two minutes.” The witness told me they had been on safari in South Africa and Botswana, and were familiar with African fauna.
There have been a lot of sightings of lynx-like cats reported from that part of Suffolk over the years, with the majority of sightings of lynx-like cats in the county coming from around the River Deben and “the Peninsulas,” the Bawdsey Peninsula, the Felixstowe Peninsula and the Shotley Peninsula.
Just over a week after the discovery of the muntjac in Ufford came a report of another sighting of a lynx-like cat at Bawdsey, just under ten miles due south of Ufford at the southern end of the Bawdsey Peninsula. Seen after dark in headlights, this big cat was described as “grey/silver with spots…. grey lynx… size of a large dog.”
These local lynx sightings go back to beyond 2008, when an off-duty prison officer from local open prison HMP Hollesley Bay saw a “spotted” big cat that became known as “the Shingle Street Lynx.” Yet another witness reported to me getting a a very good look at an animal that was “definitely” a lynx at Bawdsey in 2022, while the East Anglian Daily Times reported a sighting of a lynx in nearby Kirton in 2023. Late in 2023 there was also a report of a lynx-like cat seen at Nacton Shores, south of Ipswich and on the east bank of the Deben, in the Felixstowe Peninsula. Lynxes are good swimmers, so a lynx crossing the Deben or Orwell rivers where they are narrower – where the Peninsulas start at around Melton or near the Orwell Bridge – is feasible.