Swans, cattle, crows, and a seagull are among the animals which caused ESB outages for thousands of customers in Kerry last year.
Data released to journalist Ken Foxe from ESB Networks under the Freedom of Information Act, seen by Radio Kerry, outlines the outages caused by animals last year.
On St Patrick’s Day last year, a swan caused an outage in Ballyard in Tralee, which affected 111 customers in the area.
744 customers were affected four days later when a midnight swan strike left lines on the ground at Rathmore.
A seagull hit the line which caused an outage in Gurranebane, affecting eight customers in April last year.
Cattle caused outages on numerous occasions in Kerry throughout last year, mainly due to scratching themselves off the stay wires or pole.
A bird strike on a medium voltage busbar at Gurranebane near Cahersiveen caused an outage for over 6,600 ESB customers last August.
In Ballybunion the same month, a crow tripped the 20-kilovolt station busbar, before a bird strike four days later caused a full station outage, affecting over 3,300 customers.
Last September, birds caused an outage to over 1,300 customers in the Tralee area.
Nationally, between November 2024 and October 2025, animals were listed as the cause for over 1,500 power outages.
