A murder of crows likely caused a power outage in Halifax this morning, Nova Scotia Power says.

"We've had reports from customers of large groups of crows in the area — we're talking hundreds of crows," said spokeswoman Bev Ware.

When the skies are crowded with birds, sometimes one has the bad luck of touching the power pole and line with either end of its wings. That causes a short circuit and outage.

Unfortunately, sometimes wildlife comes into contact with our equipment. We believe a crow touched a pole and wire simultaneously.. [1/2] —@nspowerinc

..which caused a short circuit and this morning's <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Halifax?src=hash">#Halifax</a> outage. Power was restored by 10 am. Thanks everyone for your patience. [2/2] —@nspowerinc

More than 4,000 customers lost power this morning. By noon, 881 customers were still without power in the Sackville area.

As CBC reporter Brett Ruskin noted, the crow joins a list of flora and fauna blamed for outages.