Sea eagles are not eating lambs

They claim that in the past few weeks hundreds of lambs have been killed by the birds, which are being reintroduced gradually to the country after being hunted to extinction in Britain in 1918.

The group of about 30 crofters in Gairloch in Wester Ross claim that their livelihood is being jeopardised by the loss of lambs before the autumn sales.

“It is not viable, with these losses. We can’t see a future in this area with the sheep if the birds keep killing lambs,” said Willie Fraser, chairman of Gairloch and Poolewe branch of the Crofting Foundation. “We’ve seen lambs — strong, heavy animals — that have been caught by sea eagles, caught by their necks and their arteries cut so that they can’t lift their heads. One crofter has lost 50 per cent of her lambs.”

One woman had even seen an eagle killing a lamb, Mr Fraser said. “When she went up towards it, it flew off. But later, when she went back to the field, she saw the bird on top of the lamb.”

He said that vets had examined the lambs’ carcasses and reportedly found talon damage and injuries caused by being dropped from a height. Another crofter described going close to a sea eagle’s nest and finding what he described as a sheep’s graveyard.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds described the claims of some crofters as nonsense and said that the birds would have taken only carrion. It said that the birds thrived mainly on a diet of herring gulls, fulmars and fish fed to them by friendly trawlermen.