Who are they kidding?

[Alysser]

I went to college in the Adirondack Park, a mix of public and private land (many of it being wilderness), larger than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined at 6 million acres. It's a unique conservation experiment stemming from 1891. Anyway, it's wilderness attracts many people there annually for hiking, camping, skiing, fishing, "getting away", etc. A lot of these include people who don't know how to survive in the wilderness and these ugly "trees" littered the area (well not really, but they were much better than the ugly typical ones). The birds are much more likely to perch on these. I've never seen a nest in one of them but I suppose that's something that could possibly happen. While they aren't really nice to look at, they allow safety for Visitors who may get injured, lost, etc in the wilderness and allow it to sort of "blend in" with the environment.

[Randi]

Rather than just a naked pole sticking up, this is much better, although you can see it's fake. The height is surely for better reception of signals.

[cats4ever]

I'm glad that this post sparked so much response!