Powerlines + fog = a lethal mix

In 1980, The Fog debuted with little or no fanfare. It was a semi-scary movie done by John Carpenter which featured a California harbor town beset by long-dead lepers terrorizing the small community. It was a pretty low-budget affair (what B-movie isn't?) starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Leigh Curtis and Curtis's mother, Janet Leigh.

Now comes news out of Tennessee pointing to fog as a contributing factor in the deaths of multiple birds which piled up recently near Clarksville (I wrote of it here), and reported by KSMV-TV, Nashville.

Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency officers sent several of the birds' bodies to a lab in Georgia. They said the results show the birds suffered trauma including fractured skulls and broken necks, pelvises and wings.

TWRA officers said they believe fog caused the hundreds of birds to crash into the nearby power lines.

(I had thrown out a theory regarding a nearby horse pond. Obviously that was wrong).

Powerlines will continue to be a source of bird (and bat, and the occassional helicopter) deaths. Call it the cost of doing businesss in the modern era. We all want power. And delivering it to your homes and businesses economically means overhead powerlines. Combine that fact with a hindrance to visibility and you end up with a potentially lethal mix as experienced in this case.

Posted by: kcorliss on 3/09/2010 at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tags: bird deaths, birding, fog, northland outdoors, powerlines