Category: News

A relative sent me these two photos (above) of a muntjac carcass they found on the Dunwich to Walberswick coastal path (now the King Charles III Coastal Path) in the Suffolk coast on the morning of 11 August 2026. They photographed the muntjac corpse where they found it, on the path between the ruined windmill on Dingle Marshes and the start of the  East Hill woods  and Hoist Covert woods on the edge of Walberswick.

Particularly of interest to me was the way in which the spine and neck had been stripped clean and how some of the skin had been carefully removed. The front legs appear to be missing. The exposed flesh had dried out in the extreme heat.

This follows the discovery of another muntjac carcass nearby (but in a very different habitat) in the church cemetery at Dunwich in March 2026. (See here.) This showed clear signs of being a “likely” big cat kill, according to expert opinion I sought. While the Dunwich find was close to an area (Dunwich Forest) where deer are culled, butchered and buried, there are no deer culls anywhere near Walberswick or anywhere around the local marshes that I am aware of, and I live locally.

There are a lot of birds of prey round there, it being a nature reserve – including buzzards, marsh harriers, short-ears owls, sparrowhawks, peregrines, kestrels and hobbies. The precision with which the carcass had been predated on didn’t look to me like the work of birds of prey. So I ran the photos past the same experts.

Richard Freeman, a zoologist with the Centre for Fortean Zoology and a former zookeeper, replied:

“The muntjac carcasses (the Walberswick carcass and the one found in March nearby at Dunwich) remind me of a big ram carcass I examined years ago in North Devon. The skin was peeled back  and the flesh and soft organs consumed with most of the bones left intact. The neck had been dislocated. It looked like leopard kills I’d seen in Africa.

These could well be big cat victims, though without a closer look at the bodies I can’t be sure. It looks like scavangers have been having a go at them too.”

Rick Minter,  an ecologist with Royal Agricultural University Cirencester and host of the Big Cat Conversations podcast, told me that the evidence for predation in the photos of the recently found Walberswick muntjac carcass ticks some of the boxes that would make it more likely to be a big cat kill:

“I am certainly thinking that carcass is cat related, just a few key points… Jaw bone looks ‘catty’ with (a) chip out of it so (that) rules out birds, but they (birds of prey) can still pick away…. Intact shed skin peeling is a tick for cat.

Rib impacts are a tick.

Leg detail of consumption very characteristic of fresh cat consumption… A carcass in heat will dry out in hours.”

The location where the corpse was found would make an ideal ambush site for a big cat, near the Dunwich River and its sluices where  deer would come to drink, also very near a reedbed that would provide cover.

With thanks to Luke Reilly, Richard Freeman and Rick Minter.

A lynx was active around Orford Ness throughout the 2010s, according to photos of kill signs from the Ness sent to me anonymously and testimony of multiple lynx sightings there. (Update in reported sightings below, added 21/07/26.)

A Natural England FOIA disclosure entitled Reported Sightings or Signs of Exotic Species Compiled by Natural England’s Wildlife Management & Licensing Compiled by Defra Rural Development Service Prior to September 2006 included an entry  dated 18 July 2006. This refers to “dead foxes scavenged, photos supplied.” A “second opinion” had been obtained, the conclusion was “inconclusive.” I have included an extract from page 2 of this document.

Other documents and reports made public at the time identified the location as Orford Ness.

My subsequent FOIA request revealed the photo “couldn’t be found” in 2020. This was during the first Covid lockdown, so Natural England officials couldn’t get access to all the paper archives at that time. (At the time the information was compiled, it was the responsibility of Defra – the government’s Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs. Many duties of Defra were subsequently devolved to Natural England, including wildlife and landscape management at Orford Ness National Trust nature reserve.)

Then a series of 14 photos was sent anonymously to bigcatsofsuffolk in 2025, in response to my interactive map of Suffolk big cat sightings going online. The source later told me of four sightings of a big cat at Orford Ness over a five-year period. (There’s an update on this below).

This series of photos shows at least two fox carcasses. It’s hard to tell whether there are two or three different fox carcasses shown in the series of photos.

One fox carcass had its head severed, lying near the corpses, and the flesh on its ribs cleanly licked away.

One fox corpse had been neatly bitten in half with its spine exposed and its arms and torso missing.

Another photo shows a fox with a bite slicing through the top of its head. It’s hard to tell whether this one is a third kill or one of the other two kills photographed from a different angle. One of the photos has the file name “3rd carcass.” (I have made efforts to strip out any identifying file names or metadata from the photos.)

There was also a photo of a swan with its head and part of its neck severed. One of the file names of one of the photos of the swans says “swan dragged from pond.”

All the photographed kills were found within 150 yards (140 metres) of each other on the early morning of 14 March 2006, according to my anonymous source.

Update  – 21/07/26 – 2010s lynx sightings at Orford Ness and more kill signs

My source soon after sending the photos described carrying out fox and rabbit control operations at night in March 2009, together with a working dog. The witness saw through a headlamp a pair of “yellow eyes” that followed them for about 20 minutes.

They also reported that others had seen a lynx on the Ness in 2005, 2008 and 2010, in most cases walking at night by the sea defences. The same source also photographed numerous kill signs on the Ness. Based on these encounters, my source assumed the animal with the yellow eyes that was following them and their dog was a lynx.

There were roughly contemporary sightings of an animal that became known as the “Shingle Street Lynx” in Shingle Street and Hollesley, as well as contemporary field signs including scratches on trees reported in woods in Hollesley. Both locations are near Orford Ness. 

The source later recalled finding “a dozen” young foxes killed in the Ness with their ears ripped off over a 10-year period, in addition to the three fox carcasses (they confirmed it was three) and a swan carcass in the photos sent to me.

I have had to omit some of the details passed on to me by the source to avoid identifying them.

You can also find the online map on the maps page.

Above is another of my hand-drawn maps with an update on big cat sightings and kill signs in and around Suffolk. It covers the period November 2025 (when I last did an update map) up to March 2026, so just four months, which were averagely busy.

Most of the big cat activity of late has been in Suffolk Coastal District near the coast or in the area around Woodbridge and in the nearby Bawdsey Peninsula.

As you can see from the map, there’s an awful lot of activity in  and around Ufford – just north of Woodbridge – with several sightings of a lynx-like cat within a couple of weeks of each other, closely followed by the discovery of a muntjac carcass in the same village of Ufford that showed signs of predation by a big cat. (For a photo and commentary, see here.)

There were in addition to all the big cat activity around Ufford two sightings of  a lynx-like cat – a “tabby” big cat seen around Tunstall and another lynx seen not far away at Bawdsey.

There was also a sighting of a “brown” puma-like cat at Blaxhall. There have been more sightings of lynxes and pumas in this period than black leopards in this period, which hasn’t happened before.

Another muntjac corpse that was a possible big cat kill sign was found and photographed at Dunwich, near where I am currently based. For more on this, see here.

As usual, a lot of black leopard activity has been in the area around Bury St Edmunds, which has been a hotspot for big cat activity for the past few years now. The two sightings of black big cats in this part of West Suffolk were just down the road from each other – near Great Barton (there’s an admittedly blurry photo here) and near Fornham St Guinevere. In one of these sightings (the one for which there’s no photo,) a taxi driver taking a break caught in his headlights a glimpse of two black leopards together. While leopards are usually solitary, there have bee sightings of a black leopard with what looked like an older cub.

The other black leopard sighting in the region in recent months was just over the Essex border, at Puttock End which is not far from the South Suffolk town of Sudbury. It’s not an area where big cat sightings are common, but there have been more sightings from South Suffolk and environs within the past year.

I am in discussions with a colleague who is building an online interactive map of Suffolk big cat sightings, with a view to integrating my database into this. I am also in talks about others taking over most of the functions of bigcatsofsuffolk.com. Watch this space.

For earlier maps with sightings of big cats in Suffolk, going all the way back to 2023, see here. Mystery Animals of Suffolk has maps showing sightings of big cats by type of cat from 1974 to 2022.

For evidence of big cats in Suffolk – photos, video and kill signs – see here.

I was sent this photo of a muntjac carcass – possible big cat kill(?) – found in Dunwich, Suffolk on 01/03/2026.

An ecologist who’s an expert on big cats told me they’re 80% certain it’s a big cat kill. The copyright holder of the image is known to me, more information on the find to follow. I will have to be vague on exactly where it was found in Dunwich for the moment.

The expert opinion is that the way the organs are eaten out is very clinical, like a big cat kill. But the wounds inflicted on the face could be from a dog and the way the limbs are scattered is “messy” in a way that’s not typical of big cats. I am not able to name the expert at the moment, I may be able to later. 

There are deer culls (both muntjacs and red deer) in Dunwich Forest, and butchery sites in the forest where the corpses are cut up for disposal have been found, so the find could have something to do with these culls. I am investigating further.

There have been sightings of big cats around Dunwich but these were mostly some years ago, around the late 2010s, with the discovery of possible big cat kills signs as well as multiple sightings of a black leopard – including one by a warden – at Dunwich Heath National Trust nature reserve.

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.

I have received some interesting photos sent to me by a witness who was a passenger in a car travelling between Great Barton and Fornham in West Suffolk on the B1106 road just before dusk on New Year’s Eve 2025.

The photo is used with permission of the witness and copyright holder, who is known to me. The witness described the animal in the photo as “big cat shaped”. They noted the long tail that curved down and then curved up again near the end.

The witness told me the driver couldn’t stop or slow down but they were able to turn the car round and make another pass. They first noticed the animal as it was being mobbed or divebombed by what they thought was a group of at least four red kites. The witness told me they had seen groups of red kites flying up the air as they drove past on previous occasions, and that the red kites had been eating roadkill by the side of the road.

Rick Minter of Big Cat Conversations told me that red kites divebombing or mobbing big cats have been reported around the UK, presumably after the big cat had disturbed them feeding on carrion.

The witness sent two more photos that show the group of birds (red kites?) flying around the animal.

There have been some sightings of big cats in the area in recent years, with several reports in the late summer of 2024 around nearby Bury St Edmunds.