Farmer Dan McLaughlin must have been in hibernation earlier this year when the worst blizzards for decades in Scotland wiped out thousands of sheep and lambs (Letters, August 26).

Lots of predatory birds and animals will have benefited from this natural mortality. Were the sheep as strong and healthy as he thinks they are, they would all have survived.

Bad weather is an annual occurrence and scavenging the dead is not evidence of predatory birds like sea eagles having killed what they are eating. In fact for all the wonders of modern TV wildlife programmes not one has ever shown an eagle (of any species) killing a lamb.

As for killing adult sheep, even the most urban commentators know that is nonsense. The disdained "urban commentators", Mr McLaughlin should remember, are the same people whose taxes also fund the subsidies handed out annually to sheep farmers and estate managers.

While sea eagles, are imported to replace those wiped out a century or more ago, alien imported sheep (all 6.80 million of them in Scotland) cause more devastation to the Scottish countryside than do any eagles.

Sea eagles such as the one pictured are to be welcomed - the income from eco-tourism must be very welcome indeed to those near where these birds chose to live.

Bernard Zonfrillo,

28 Brodie Road,

Glasgow.