Santa Fe Standard

Officials from the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) said a crow was to blame for Thursday's power outage in Santa Fe.

More than 10,000 customers were left without power.

Ray Sandoval, spokesman for PNM, said the company determined that the power outage was caused by a large crow, according to Santa Fe New Mexican. He said its wingspan was wide enough to touch the 46,000-volt line located at the Zia Road transformer station. 

The outage began just before 7:30 a.m. and lasted for approximately 45 minutes. It affected much of the downtown area. The crow was killed in the incident. 

"It was a fluke accident," Sandoval said. "Birds land on wires and poles all the time. This guy — the way he landed or took off, his wingspan allowed him to touch wires that shouldn't be touched, and his body was the conduit."

Ken Bunkowski, a bird expert for The New Mexican, said these birds usually know how to navigate power lines and poles. 

"Typically, if they are just sitting on power lines, there's no issue," he said. "If they get into a substation or transformer where they can touch one of the power cables there, it will short it out. That does happen."

These incidents are typically caused by "a larger bird, like a raven or a crow or a hawk," Bunkowski said. "The smaller birds, no, I don't think that would be an issue with them."

Birds can cause outages as they fly away from a transformer and drop excrement on electrical components, Santa Fe New Mexican reported. 

Crews continued to work on the transformer station that was affected by the crow, which was turned into a pile of dust during the accident, Sandoval said.

"It was a pretty gruesome sight," he said.

PNM is New Mexico's largest electricity provider. It services more than 500,000 residential and business customers across the state.