An unlucky red-tailed hawk likely triggered a power outage Wednesday in and around Bend’s core.

“It was severely electrocuted,” said Jeannette Bonomo, co-founder of High Desert Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation.

The Bend-based wildlife aid group responded around 1:50 p.m. Wednesday to a report of a dead and singed hawk found below a power pole along SW 13th Street near Donovan Avenue — between SW Century Drive and SW Colorado Avenue.

A worker at a nearby business reported the dead raptor.

At about the same time, nearly 5,150 Pacific Power customers, mostly in downtown Bend, lost power, said Paul Vogel, a spokesman with the Portland-based company. The outage lasted around a half hour.

While not certain the hawk caused the outage, Vogel and other company officials said it likely did so by making contact with two power lines at the same time.

The company is investigating the exact cause of the problem and why it spread from an initial hiccup in the flow of electricity to a widespread outage, he said.

If the bird did trigger the outage, work crews will retrofit the power pole in hopes of avoiding more birds being harmed, said Brent Leonard, environmental manager for Pacific Power.

“That’s our whole goal — to keep the power on and the birds protected,” he said.

The company provides power to customers in Oregon, Washington and parts of Northern California and has thousands of miles of power lines, Vogel said. Last year it spent about $2 million on retrofits.

Along with response to a single bird strike, the company will perform retrofits when making repairs and on sections of power line that have experienced patterns of bird strikes.

The retrofits last year included more than 1,300 power poles, according to Pacific Power data.

The spot where the hawk was found Wednesday hasn’t been a hot spot for bird strikes, Leonard said.

In the last month, Bonomo said High Desert Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation has responded to three birds zapped by power lines, including the red-tailed hawk in Bend. The others were a bald eagle in Lakeview and another red-tailed hawk, in Chemult. Both of those birds were alive when found. Wildlife rehabilitators euthanized the bald eagle; the hawk from Chemult is still alive.

Although most of the birds shocked by power lines are found alive, she said, most don’t survive.

“Even though most of them come in alive, most of them don’t make it,” Bonomo said. “There is just too much damage.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7812, ddarling@bendbulletin.com