Dianne Ryan of Lazy Point in Amagansett discovered five dead birds lying beneath a telephone pole on her street on July 10. A week later, on the 17th, she found four more, underneath the same pole. All nine were juvenile starlings.
The problem turned out to be an electrical one, remedied by PSEG, but the road to fixing it was long.
After the first five birds were found, Ms. Ryan called the utility to investigate the pole and its attached transformer, and a crew was sent out. “The response from the first guy that came out was ‘No, no, no, no, the wires don’t kill the birds,’ ” Ms. Ryan said. She mentioned that the first crew “cleaned up some hanging wire” as well.
When four more starlings were found in the same spot the next week, a neighbor of hers called the State Department of Environmental Conservation, at the suggestion of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center. D.E.C. employees came to retrieve the birds, but told Ms. Ryan they could not determine a cause of death because of decomposition — it was so hot outside. “They told us to put any more birds that we found on ice and in the freezer,” Ms. Ryan said, which is in accordance with the state’s webpage on reporting dead wildlife.
PSEG, meanwhile, notified Ms. Ryan that it might take them some time to get back out to Lazy Point. “The guy mentioned that it was going to be 10 days before they could get here because of outages,” she said. “This concerned me, because if it is electrical, it makes sense that a fire could erupt.”
Luckily it took only until Monday for a crew to be sent back. The verdict this time: The birds were electrocuted.
“The bottom line is, the coil was too close to the wires,” Ms. Ryan said. “So they changed out our coil, and they needed to raise the wires.” The crew on Monday was an emergency crew, however, and did not have the equipment needed to do that. Another crew would have to come out on Tuesday.
Before the situation was resolved, PSEG was offered a chance to comment, and responded that “PSEG Long Island personnel investigated the issue and met with the customer. We are actively working on remediation measures at this location.”
With the neighbors waiting anxiously, PSEG did indeed arrive on Tuesday afternoon, and began raising the wires on four poles, which should alleviate the situation. Birds should be able to sit on telephone wires safely, but when they are sitting on wire and touch something else, such as a transformer, they can be electrocuted.
“The guy told me he doesn’t understand why [the birds] weren’t blowing the transformer,” Ms. Ryan said. “It didn’t completely make sense to him, but hopefully, this is the solution.”
“PSEG has come through,” she said later.
