I am not entirely sure whether my tale fits into the remit of this website, but, nevertheless, since it is bizarre, and it is true, then I shall take pen to paper and send this little offering to the two gentle-folk who edit this splendid magazine!

Among my particular enthusiasms is an interest in wildlife: in particular, birds. There was a time when my chums and I thought little of a two or three hour journey through the narrow roads of Eastern England in the hope of adding a new species to our burgeoning lists of birds we had seen!

A place we often visited in those innocent, carefree days was a reserve run specifically to encourage unusual birds to visit (and perhaps breed) on the Suffolk coast, near the ancient and now almost totally  vanished town of Dunwich.

By our standards, it had not been a particularly good day: the rarity we had travelled to observe had departed before our arrival, and we had had to be content with a couple of Bitterns and the usual Marsh Harriers and Avocets: pretty, but nothing to us at the time!

As we travelled northwards along a narrow, winding road that led  to a wide estuary and the main route home, I noticed in a field by the side of the road a small caravan, from which a man emerged as we drew level. He seemed to be taking out a bag of rubbish, which he placed in a sack a few metres away from the door of the caravan.

A sudden movement in the darkness under a nearby hedgerow caught my attention: I screwed up my eyes and tried to make something of the large, dark shape that moved sinuously towards the caravan. Our driver was forced to stop at a junction at this point: I was astonished to see the shape emerge into the full glare of the afternoon sun and resolve itself into the unmistakable form of a stalking lioness!!!!

Stunned, I temporarily lost the power of speech! By the time my faculties had fully returned, I blurted out what I had seen: my colleagues raised their eyebrows sceptically, and could not be prevailed upon to return to the field!

Well that is my story: simple? Incredible? Perhaps.... but I  know what I saw! And, as if to confirm this bizarre occurrence, two days later a party of strawberry pickers some twenty miles North were surprised by a 'fully grown lioness springing over the bonnet' of their car!