crow electrocutions

[erik]

About 12 years ago while living in Abbotsford - the Clearbrook area - I ran outside because I heard what sounded like a loud explosion. At the bottom of our local power pole (the one with the transformer and all the other jazz on top) lay what was left of a crow. A neighbour who witnessed the incident said he saw a crow at the top of the  pole by the transformer pecking at one of the contacts coming from the transformer. Then... Ka Boom - a very loud explosion and a very quiet and unlit neighbourhood. When the Hydro truck came by to reset the breaker he said that this was becoming more common and attributed it to the crows' love of shiny objects and the fact that the contacts on the top of the pole were usually copper and quite shiny. Since then, I moved to a trailer park in Mission. Nothing untoward happened until last year when Hydro came in and updated our power architecture. All the transformers and the other jazz were replaced. Since then we've had three crow explosions - each one exactly the same as the one in Abbotsford 12 years earlier. Two of them in the last 2 weeks. What gives? Does anyone know? Besides the shiny contacts I also heard that a certain frequency emitted by the transformers is attracting the crows. We also have quite a few Steller's Jays and there has never been an incident with any of them. Just the crows. The repairman did his best triko cover up anything shiny - he was aware of the crow/shiny object story - and besides helping us install a rather large plastic crow on the old pole which was less than a metre away he could help us no more. We thanked him - what a great guy going out of his way like that - and said we'd keep an eye on things.

I guess what I need is any reports from other people regarding the same problem and perhaps let us know what solutions there are out there. Besides losing crows, the 4 hour long blackouts also kinda suck.

Keep in touch and here's hoping we don't have a crow terror suicide bomber network operating around here. (Sorry, I couldn't resist)

Thanks,

Erik

[Gord]

Erik, that's a very interesting observation! Great to hear efforts are made to make things less shiny/interesting for the benefit of both bird and the neighbourhood! Thanks for sharing.

[butterfly]

Couldn't they construct a 1/4 inch wire mesh cage over the top of the contacts?