It had been a typically blustery night on the Isle of Lewis. Donald MacLeod ventured out to check on his birds, as he did every morning, but as he neared the aviary at the end of his garden, it was obvious something was wrong.

“The roof of the aviary had been cut off and was flapping in the wind,” he explains. “My little barn owl, Scamp, was missing. Someone had broken in. They either took him or he managed to escape as they tried.”

MacLeod, a trained falconer, used the five-year-old barn owl to entertain children who came to stay at the bed and breakfast he runs with his wife on Lewis, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

“Scamp was a member of our family really,” says MacLeod. “I’m devastated that he’s gone.”

The break-in at MacLeod’s aviary is unusual for a number of reasons. Their bed and breakfast sits on a picturesque, but remote part of the wind-buffeted Lewis coastline – hardly a crime hotspot. Thefts of birds of prey, and particularly owls are also uncommon.

But it is a crime that is being seen more and more frequently, according to those within the falconry community. And there is a growing suspicion that they are being targeted for a reason – as a replacement for cash.

Globally, the number of non-cash payments are expected to reach almost 726 billion transactions by the end of the decade, an increase of 10.9% since 2015. Some countries, however, are rushing ahead in the move to electronic payments. In the UK, for example, the number of cash transactions in 2017 fell by 15% to 13.1 billion compared to the previous year, while payments using cards increased. In Japan, cash payments decreased by 8.5% in 2017 and in China mobile payments grew by a fifth in just one quarter of 2016