Over 12,000 houses were without power in the Bedford and Sackville areas Wednesday afternoon, says Nova Scotia Power.

Crews responded to two separate root causes.

Halifax fire platoon chief Scot Shaffner said his members were called to smoldering osprey nest Wednesday afternoon in the Bedford area.

Shaffner says ospreys often build their nests between high-tension wires. When the wires are wet they conduct electricity causing smoldering flames, says Shaffner.

Nova Scotia Power says the nest was unoccupied and crews later removed it.

Work on transmission line in Mount Uniacke is also causing an outage.

Power was reinstated at about 4:30 p.m.