More than 5,000 Central Maine Power customers were out of power for more than an hour Tuesday morning. The culprit — for the second time in a month — was an osprey, this time dropping branches on the Bath North End substation off High Street.

Gail Rice, CMP spokeswoman, said power went out for 5,136 customers at about 7:11 a.m. By 8 a.m., crews had restored one of the circuits, leaving 2,248 customers without power. Power was fully restored at 8:48 a.m.

The outage affected customers in Bath, Arrowsic, Georgetown, Woolwich and a small part of Wiscasset, Rice said.

Ospreys nesting this time of year drop sticks, and if a stick hits on certain structures, it becomes part of the path to ground, disrupting power flow, Rice said.

“This time of a year, it’s a problem,” Rice said, which CMP is working to address. “We put plastic piping on some of these structures,” and even put out turkey decoys in some areas that ospreys can mistake for the more threatening turkey vulture.

In early May, sections of Brunswick and Harpswell were left without electricity for about 40 minutes after a limb dislodged from an osprey nest and fell onto power lines below.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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