A group of small islands in the Minch have been declared free of rats for the first time in more than a century.
The black rats were not native to the Shiants off Lewis and were thought to be the descendants of rats that came ashore from shipwrecks in the 1900s.
The islands are an important seabird habitat and numbers of some species were in decline, or disappeared, due to rats eating their eggs.
Conservationists said the mammals had not been found for two years.
RSPB Scotland and others have carried out "intensive monitoring" for rats following a four-year project aimed at eradicating them.
Two years is the internationally agreed criterion for rat-free status, the conservationists said.=READ MORE
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