Bird Guard KwaZulu-Natal

Birds cause damage and power outages in a multitude of ways when they land or nest on power structures, namely:

• Bird streamers – birds can cause flashovers or line faults from the long streams of excreta or waste that they produce. Bird streamers are the major cause of faults on transmission lines.
• Bird pollution – similar to streamers, when birds excrete on power lines, flashovers can occur when the insulator string gets wet and breaks down. The most critical times when these faults occur is during the bird’s natural quiet times like early evening and before dawn, as the birds come home to nest for the night.
• Habitat destruction – due to a lack of nesting sites like trees and cliffs in populated areas and because their natural habitat was destroyed or moved during the erection of power lines, birds tend to choose to nest on electricity structures. Depending on the bird, they use twigs, branches and large sticks to make their nests on the sturdy structures. The sticks and branches can cause flashovers on the lines and even result in the nests catching fire. This is extremely harmful to the birds and their chicks but can also be a fire hazard if the burning nest falls to the ground or the veld below.
• Species protection – certain bird species are at a higher risk of dying from electrocution on power lines or in some cases as a result of a shock by the flashovers. These tend to be bigger birds of prey like vultures, eagles and herons due to their size and wingspan. Many of these birds are on conservation watch as their numbers in the wild are dwindling.