Now, perhaps I'm not the most expert in electricity, but it seems to me that anything sitting on a high tension wire should be just fine, as long as they don't get too close to the wire also connected to the other phase. Electrons, as I remember from grade school follows the path of least resistance. So, in order for a bird to ignite, the electrons would have to over come the resistance from the wire to the bird and then through the air possibly to ground or the other phase. Something here doesn't add up.
OK, I read more and they actually said what I said and then mention the idea they go where the wires connect to other components. It still seems odd to me.
A Pontiac Firebird is a good example of this..…
Enough windmills will solve the issue
Looks like everyone in the comments so far think that this is some kind of funny joke for some reason.
KEK.
It's gizmodo.com...they're a bunch of "tech savvy intellectuals" in their minds. In reality, they just fanboy over latest tech.
Birds aren't real, they're CIA (or some other alphabet soup agency) drones. It's their batteries bursting and burning up.
Yea, but the article didn't mention that fact. This is nothing but pure propaganda.
That is correct. If you are not grounded or connected to some other path, you can safely hold on to a high tension wire.
The article author used a stock image of a small birb. Usually when there's an bird death it's a big species like a blue heron. Their wingspan is large enough to short two phases. 44 fires in a 5 year period is pretty small considering the millions of birds and tens of thousands of miles of power lines in this country.