A BIG cat has been sighted in Frodsham just days after a mysterious predator was captured on CCTV as it ran across a paddock in the village.

The latest sighting took place on April 9 and was reported to Puma Watch North Wales, a group set up to investigate and document such encounters that has been getting an increasing number of reports from Cheshire and Shropshire.

The witness, called Daniel, said he encountered the “very dark brown or grey” creature on Tarvin Road at around 9pm.

In his report, he said: “About 100m in the distance I saw a large animal at least 4ft.

“I stopped to try and get more of a look through the bush clearing, but me stopping seemed to make it alert and it was so quickly aware, it very smoothly ran off back into the forest behind uphill.

“The run was very cat-like as I own a cat myself, but it covered about 50 meters in 5-10 seconds very efficiently without breaking a sweat.”

Just days earlier, on March 18, a creature was accidentally caught on CCTV by Chris Bebbington.

The motion-activated camera was set off when he and his wife Wendy were working in the garden, which overlooks the paddock.

Footage of a large black creature was caught on CCTV by Chris and Wendy Bebbington of Frodsham

Footage of a large black creature was caught on CCTV by Chris and Wendy Bebbington of Frodsham

He went back to watch the footage after he discovered a dead chicken in the middle of the field.

The footage, about three seconds in, shows a mysterious black animal carrying the chicken in its mouth enter from the top right. It then drops it before sprinting across the paddock.

He said: "It was mid morning and as I was looking out the back I could see something on the paddock. I thought it was a bit of rubbish that was blown over, but I went out and it was a dead chicken. I could see something had had it but it was intact. It looked a bit strange. Later on I wondered if the CCTV footage had caught anything. I went back through the footage for that day. We'd been in the garden early and we'd initiated the camera to start rolling. I focussed in where the chicken body was and I saw this animal come in from the right. I was intrigued by how big it was and also how it moved - it moves slowly and then all of a sudden goes really, really quickly. I think that, whatever it was, for the first part of the run it had the chicken in its mouth.

"A fox set the camera off about a week later. You couldn't see it very well but it moved very differently from this animal.

"It looked black, whatever it was. It looked big and it moved fast. It was quite a long way away, but I'd say it was the size of a Labrador or something like that."

Tony Jones, founder of Puma Watch Wales, says Cheshire is becoming a hot spot for big cat sightings.

He recently set up an interactive map using OpenStreetMap to show where big cats have been reported in North Wales, Cheshire and Shropshire.

He added: "Multiple sightings have also occurred in Chester in recent months, including when a similar animal was caught on camera in Chester Meadows and when one animal was spotted twice in the same night behind Asda.

"Cheshire Police announced they were investigating whether “a larger predator” was responsible for a series of sheep killings, saying that “a large, black-cat type animal” had been spotted nearby.

"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."

He added: "We've created the interactive map to help people find sightings by location. We've simply had so many reports now that a map is the only decent way for people to browse through them.

"In time, we hope to add functionality to filter the sightings on the map by things like date, species, or to only show sightings with photos etc, but for now it simply shows every sighting.