One Con Edison crew has come up with its own solution: a plastic battery-powered owl that swivels its head and makes a hooting noise, bought at a local nursery.  The idea came from Gerry Goodwin, 65, a 44-year Con Edison veteran who tired of continually replacing the 24,000-volt feeder reclosure on a pole on 11th Avenue, just off Clintonville Street in Whitestone, Queens, which has become a main parakeet habitat, along with Canarsie and Midwood in Brooklyn.  “These things cost about $20,000 to replace, and we’ve gone through five in the past couple years,” Mr. Goodwin said of the feeder reclosures. “These nests are killing us.”  Pondering the problem, Mr. Goodwin recalled that a co-worker had installed a plastic owl on his boat to keep sea gulls away.  “I figured, ‘If it works for sea gulls, it’ll work for parakeets; let’s put one up on the equipment,’ ” Mr. Goodwin said. So last year, they bought an owl and named him Hootie.  Exotic green birds have invaded Whitestone, Queens. Their huge nests damage electrical wires. One Con Ed crew decided to do something about it. Thus begins the saga of Hootie, the electric owl.  Hootie worked like a charm. Months went by with no new nests. But suddenly the nests were back, and again they caused the feeder reclosure to short-circuit and catch fire.  Hootie’s batteries must have run out, the workers said, and the birds immediately detected him as a fake and built their nest next to him.  “I think one of them married Hootie,” joked Sam Maratto, a Con Edison supervisor.  At any rate, when Mr. Goodwin took Hootie down, he saw that he had been damaged by the fire. So Mr. Maratto drove to a nearby plant nursery and bought another one, and a set of fresh batteries.  On the way, Mr. Maratto pointed out some huge nests in the area. When the nests become wet, he said, they conduct electricity and cause the devices to short-circuit and explode.  “They’re all over, and they’re huge,” he said.  He stopped at a device on a pole near Seventh Avenue and 150th Street “smothered” by a huge nest.  “Look at that capacitor bank — it’s a condominium,” he said. “It’s engulfed. That’s a piece of Con Ed equipment; you can’t even see it.”  According to the prevailing theory, the birds escaped from cargo at Kennedy International Airport and now proliferate mostly in Brooklyn and Queens, with perhaps 300 nests that cause “a tremendous cost” to Con Edison, Mr. Williams said.  The men said working in Whitestone had given them double duty as parrot home wreckers (though parrot sympathizers should know that the birds rebuild their homes within several days). When working on nest-infested equipment, Con Ed workers must wear protective suits and face masks.  “These birds don’t go easy,” said one worker, Patrick Chery. “They hover right around you, and if they have eggs in the nest, they’ll attack you.”  Mr. Goodwin said that the Hootie solution seemed like the way to go citywide, except for the need to change the batteries every few months. He has asked Con Edison engineers to come up with a way to feed low-voltage direct current from the lines to power the owls.  Last week, Mr. Chery mounted the new Hootie. Within minutes, a parakeet flew over to take a look.  Steve Baldwin, who runs BrooklynParrots.com, a Web site devoted to chronicling the wild urban parakeets, said the parakeets have strong instincts to return to their original nesting spot. They will not be fooled for too long by a plastic owl, he said. A better solution might be using recorded hawk calls to deter the parakeets, he added, and providing “alternate nest platforms” on poles.  “I know there are people who think Con Edison is killing them, but I think they’re pretty humane about removing the nests,” he said. “It would be nice if, on our Con Ed bills, there was a box you could check to donate $5 for humane monk parakeet nest removal.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Real Parrots, Fake Owls and Con Ed, Stocking Up on Batteries. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
To deter the parrots of Brooklyn and Queens from nesting on electrical transformers, one Con Ed crew turned to a garden-supply staple.