A couple of birds and an alleged drunken driver had Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. crews scrambling Thursday morning to restore power to residents in several towns in the Greater Bangor area.

The two outages were unrelated but occurred at about the same time, causing a widespread loss of power to residences and businesses from Costigan to Carmel.

The most severe outage originated at Graham Station in Veazie shortly after 10 a.m. Bangor Hydro officials said nesting birds were the culprits. A piece of twine, which the birds had used to build their nest, dropped into a “bus,” a piece of equipment that collects electrical currents and redistributes them.

The twine caused the widespread outage in the Bangor area. Normally the lines are evenly distributed between two buses, but workers are doing maintenance at the station and on Thursday all power lines were running through the affected bus.

At about the same time, a car struck a utility pole on Route 2 in Milford damaging power lines and an electrical transformer. The accident resulted in a smaller outage in the Costigan and Milford areas, according to Bill Cohen of Bangor Hydro.

Power was restored to some areas within 40 minutes, while others were without power for more than two hours, the utility spokesman said.

State Trooper Steve Murray investigated the 10:25 a.m. accident in Milford and said a truck driven by Lester Lannigan, 58, of Brewer left Route 2 and broke off the utility pole.

The accident caused severe damage to Lannigan’s truck and the utility pole.

Lannigan was alone in the truck and was not wearing a seat belt, Murray said. Lannigan was arrested and charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor and imprudent speed.

Murray said Lannigan appeared to be exceeding the 35 mph speed limit.