A MAN on his lunchtime break believes he has made another sighting of the mysterious beast of Birchencliffe.

Gob-smacked Ian Lee was quietly eating a sandwich at Armitage's Garden Centre, Birchencliffe, when he spotted the big cat.

The community psychiatric nurse said: "I didn't get to see it for very long, but it was huge.

"It certainly wasn't a dog, it was far too big for that and moved in a cat-like way.

"I just thought `wow!'."

His eyewitness account follows the first sighting earlier this month of a big beast near Burn Road in Birchencliffe.

A last-night shopper leaving Birchencliffe Service Station in Halifax Road saw the creature slink off into countryside.

Another man later said he saw the cat on an out-building in the same area.

Mr Lee, who travels to see patients in their homes, said: "I was out and about when I parked near the garden centre for lunch.

"I was just sitting there when I saw it come out of the undergrowth and then run back in.

"It was very fleeting but it was certainly an amazing sight."

The Examiner reported last week how an amazed couple watched as a big black cat ate a chicken carcass in one go outside their Bolster Moor home.

Experts said they believed it could be the same creature - big cats such as pumas cover 60 to 70 miles a day in search of food.