Jogger captures snap of a ‘lynx big cat’ on the prowl in quiet village

A "lynx" big cat has been photographed by a stunned jogger who stumbled across the sighting in a quiet village.

The runner, who doesn’t want to be named, took the image of the large cat during his morning run in Cornwall.

Britain's top big cat tracker Rhoda Watkins is taking the sighting in a field at Coombe, near St Austell, last week, seriously, CornwallLive reports.

The man who took the photo shared it to the village’s Facebook page and said: “Saw what looked like a large cat (could be a fox though) in the field this morning.

"Was zoomed in all the way so image not to clear.

"Any feline/fox experts out there?”

Many people commented it looked like a lynx.

One resident joked they were christening it the Coombe Cougar.

The photograph was shared on the Cornwall Mammal Group page and while some people claimed the image was a fake others agreed it had the body shape, size and markings of a lynx.

The man who took the image said: “I had just finished a run around the local area and was going to stop and take a breather up against a gate as I usually do.

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"I looked out across the field and saw a creature which I thought was a dog at first.

“It moved across from one side of the field to the other.

"The way it was moving I was sure it wasn’t a dog.

"My next thought was fox, so thought I’d turn my music off and take a video and zoom in and have a look.

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“Unfortunately, because I had been running with my phone in my hand, my hand and phone were really sweaty and I couldn’t swipe my phone to video mode.

"So an image was all I could get.

"It ended up continuing across the field and then into the bushes.

“After looking at the image when I got home I could clearly see it wasn’t a dog so thought I would put it up on the village Facebook page.”

Citing other recent sightings in the village, Cornwall’s expert big cat tracker Rhoda Watkins is pretty sure a lynx is living in the area.

On investigating she found scat (animal faeces) which has been sent off for analysis.

Rhoda, from Redruth, has investigated myriad sightings in Cornwall and elsewhere in the UK, and has even trained with the bushmen big cat trackers of Namibia.

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