A PARISH footpath warden says he has discovered at least two large cats of different colouration which hunt wild pigs in woods adjacent to farmland near Tidenham.

"I have even tracked them in snow and been just behind them," said Kevin Fieldhouse of Sedbury, one of a handful of volunteers who regularly walks field paths for the parish to check they are clear.

"One is black but another is fawn, like a puma – or there may be more than one of each.

"I have seen them walking along a field edge but more often I just see their behinds vanishing ahead when I am nearly on top of them."

Mr Fieldhouse said there were others in the area who had talked to him about sightings, and his brother in law and some friends had seen one sitting beside the road near the Rosemary Lane turn as they drove home in the small hours from a party in Coleford.

"I've been aware going back over five or six years that a big cat of some description was staying somewhere at the top of Tidenham Parish," he said.

He said walking up to 14 miles a day in the countryside had enabled him to develop excellent tracking skills and he could approach within a few feet of rabbits and other wildlife.

But the big cats were very shy and moved very quickly if either hunting something or worried about being followed. Nevertheless farmers and other people in the area regularly heard low lion-like roaring.

'I have heard they don't make a noise unless there are other big cats around," said Mr Fieldhouse.

There was a colony of wild pigs which the cats stalked, he said, but they rarely attacked stock – usually only sheep – unless there were weak or sick animals.

•Mrs Millie Burford of Whitchurch, near Monmouth, reported this week that her brother Derek Ashman, who was visiting from Norfolk, had spotted a large black cat 'bigger than his medium-sized dog' with a very long tail in the middle of a field on an early morning walk. He watched it lope away in the direction of Great Doward. And Trevor Payne of Mile End reported a similar animal 'standing about 15 inches at the shoulder' as he drove past the end of the Forest cycle trail at Parkend – up to that point, he said, he had been a total disbeliever in big cat stories.

If you have a sighting of the 'beast' to report (better still a picture!) please tell the Review about it on 01594 841113.