‘I’m used to people thinking I’m lying’: are Scotland’s sea eagles killing hundreds of lambs?

Bringing back the long-vanished bird to the UK was hailed as a conservation triumph. Then farmers started finding the corpses of their prized livestock

• Photographs by Murdo MacLeod

Two spinal columns, a dozen ribs and a hollowed-out head lie next to a peak called rock of the eagle" in Gaelic. These are the remains of a pair of three-month-old lambs. It's muggy, and maggots and foxes will make light work of the remaining skin and bone. In a few weeks, it'll be as if it never happened.

Ruaridh MacKay, who has been farming here at Stronmagachan Farm in Inveraray for 25 years, picks up one of the spines: sodden and slimy from successive fronts of rain, every morsel of flesh has been excavated. He was expecting to take these lambs to market next month.

Mackay says the mysterious deaths started about 12 years ago