Don saw a black panther or leopard in Derbyshire in 1989 at a time when local farmers and police were reporting sightings of a big black cat in the Derbyshire press.  

Don retained his interest in the topic and brought a thermal camera in 2022 to film local wildlife and hopefully a big cat. Within a few weeks he noticed one of the blobs on his thermal footage was cat shaped, and larger than any foxes and badgers he had filmed. Seeing the shape again Don concluded he was indeed filming a large cat. It is judged to be around 109 cms from nose to rump.   

Don discusses the thermal footage on this episode. A selection of the video recordings and stills taken from the videos are on the Big Cat Conversations website, under ep 84 of the Refs & Links page.     

Word of the week:   monopod

13 October 2022