A member of the public has caught what they believe to be a lynx on video while on holiday near Llandudno.
At around 11:30 AM on Thursday 13th May, Lucy was out hiking along a country lane in the area. Walking through a steep valley, she spotted the animal prowling through a field alongside the road.
She told Puma Watch: “I’m from Widnes but I’ve come to stay in Llandudno for a week on holiday.
“While out hiking around the area we spotted what I’m sure was a Lynx tracking through a field alongside the lane we were on.
“It was only small, not much larger than a domestic cat at all, so it must have been fairly young. But I’m sure it was a lynx because of the distinctive spotty marking, long pointed ears and short stubby tail.
“It ran ahead of us and cut through the bushes on our right onto the lane, it then spotted us and made off along the lane.
“I got my phone out and managed to record the last few seconds we saw of it before it jumped into the bushes on the other side. It was quite far away at this point though I managed to zoom in and just about catch it.”
Last weekend, a large black cat reportedly “terrified” a pair of domestic cats near Glan Conwy, just a few miles from Llandudno. Huw told Puma Watch: “A big black cat spooked our two domestic cats leaving them terrified about going outside. I caught the cat in the beam of a torch and it was definitely much larger than the biggest domestic cat I’ve seen.”
Further afield, Len claims both himself and his wife have seen ‘black panthers’ living in Conwy County for the last 25 years. The Pandy Tudur resident said his most recent sighting was in 2019, when he saw to ‘pups’, which his wife also witnessed two weeks later. Big cats were also spotted near Llansannan and Cyffylliog earlier this year.
In 2018, North Wales Police issued an artists impression, resembling a lynx, to help the public identify a big cat they were looking for in the Llangollen area.
Big cats such as pumas are solitary with a hunting range of dozens of miles. They’re mostly spotted in Snowdonia and the Clwydian hills but reports of sightings in urban locations some distance from these areas are becoming more frequent.
As seen with Llandundo’s now-famous goats, who have taken to roaming the town’s deserted streets during the coronavirus lockdowns, it’s likely that the reduced levels of human activity over the last year is encouraging big cats to roam further from the hills into more populated areas.
When big cats were banned as pets in the 1970s, it was legal to release them into the countryside to avoid expensive rehoming costs. Owners from across the UK travelled to areas like Wales to release their cats in the remote environment, where small but significant populations have thrived ever since.
Earlier this year, the Welsh Government responded to the recent spate of sightings and confirmed the steps they take to investigate any reported to them, including taking casts of paw prints.
Lynx photo 1: Keith Williams under CC BY 2.0
Lynx photo 2: Mathias Appel
Clearly a cat. And the tail is long, not short and stubby.
And I have claimed to have witnessed a puma/panther in Buckley.
Come on, this footage does not show a lynx.