The majority of wildlife related outage issues occur on equipment structures, i.e. transformer poles, transformer banks, capacitor banks, regulators, reclosers, etc.

Birds will defecate on arrestors, cutouts, bushings, terminations, insulators, and anything else they are perched above. This excrement/contamination will eventually cause a failure.

Raptors will perch on crossarms, pole tops, equipment, phases, jumpers, and equipment to hunt and also consume their prey. As you can see in the photo to the right this Swainsons Hawk is sitting in a very dangerous area of the structure. The jumpers have a tubing installed but there are openings in the tubing very close to the bird. The top section of the cutouts are exposed, the top section of the arrestors are exposed and the ground lead of the arrestors is very close to the birds tail. All a recipe for failure.