No matter how long you watch wildlife in the garden, sooner or later there will be a surprise, which is all part of the attraction and thrill of looking.
Looking from the house means it works as a hide and birds and mammals behave quite naturally. Surprises in our garden in the past few years have included a hawfinch, two jays, and a confrontation between a roe deer and a badger, but the latest surpassed any of these.
It was late afternoon, after I had put out the last of the food for wildlife, and I glanced out of the end window. There, feeding at a small bowl filled with mixed grain, was a cat. I almost dismissed it as one of the feral cats from the nearby village of Farr. However, the more I looked the more intrigued I became, as it looked like a true, pure wildcat, Felix sylvestris.
The problem is that there has been so much hybridisation between feral/domestic cats and wildcats that the pure wildcat is now difficult to identify. Not only that, some people claim there may be only 40 pure wildcats left in Scotland while others say around 400. The true answer is that nobody knows.
So there seems little chance that a pure “Highland tiger” could be feeding in our garden – and in any case how do you identify one?
There are plenty of illustrations and descriptions in books to help, with the main difference being the wildcat has a thick and club-like tail with a blunt tip. The tail also has distinct, perfect, bold black rings round it. The feral/domestic cat has a slim, tapering tail and lacks the distinct rings.
The more I looked the more I was sure it was a pure wildcat. It stayed for three days, during which time I took some photographs. Was there really a pure wildcat feeding in our garden? I was convinced.
