400-bird Sanctuary is feather in rescuer's cap

© By Melissa Morrison March 12, 2006 Arizona Highways

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Oz, a Moluccan cockatoo, has plucked all his feathers, leaving a fluffy white head atop a scrawny naked bird body. He looks like a streaker wearing a kachina mask.

Waylon was the spoils of a divorce. "There was an ad in the Phoenix paper about five years ago that said, 'If he's not adopted by Saturday, he goes in the stew pot,' " says caretaker Sybil Erden of the citron cockatoo currently clinging sideways to his cage. In response, Waylon flaps his wings and shrieks, a sound that evokes the image of Anthony Perkins' knife coming down on Janet Leigh in the Psycho shower. "And this is why the guy wanted to give the bird up," Erden adds.

"Hi, Ellie-Deli, you're a good girl!" she says to a white sulphur-crested cockatoo, who clacks her tongue in welcome. "Ellie would actually be a wonderful companion, except she is missing a wing, and no one wanted her," Erden tells me.

Four hundred handicapped, neurotic, elderly and anti-social birds have found a haven at the Oasis Sanctuary, on a 23-acre pecan orchard in Cascabel, in southeastern Arizona.

The reason that birds native to the Amazon, Indonesia, Australia and Africa ended up in this patch of Sonoran Desert is that cockatoos, macaws, conures and other parrot species weren't meant to live in captivity, Erden says, and the birds' owners couldn't take the resulting rebellious behavior and noise. About 1.2 million feathered pets are abandoned annually, she estimates. That number also includes birds that outlive their owners; some parrot species can live as long as a century.

Their presence in the dusty desert is startling. The screeches, singsongs, caws and warbles coming from the lines of tree-shaded cages evoke a Dickens-era insane asylum. A yellow-naped Amazon named Max mumbles in a way that's almost human, like English heard through a wall.

And their colors are shockingly beautiful: parrots whose green is nearly fluorescent, a Moluccan cockatoo's creamy Chanel pink. The dozens of cockatiels who share a cage the size of a child's bedroom have identical circles of orange on their cheeks, like vaudeville rouge. The lovebirds, who reside nearby, are soft hues of orange, blue and green, shading into each other like Easter eggs.

"Lovebirds started it all for me," says Erden, 54. "They're my jewels."

Erden, who has a pair of rainbow lories tattooed on her back, used to be a Phoenix artist, but gave herself over to bird rescue after she began volunteering with For the Birds, a rescue organization. When cages eventually replaced her furniture, she realized she had a new calling. She started the Oasis in 1997, and moved to Cascabel in September 2000, when she found the acreage.

She is a self-taught bird expert who lives on the premises in a trailer that's filled with 13 cats, five dogs and many reptiles. The sanctuary relies on grants and private donations for cash and equipment.

Erden runs the Oasis with six paid staff members and dozens of volunteers.

The birds also care for each other. Most are housed in pairs. Many breeds bond for life, regardless of gender, which is why one of the first things Erden does with a new arrival is find it a compatible cage mate. The resulting relationships are touching. Jacqueline and Sparky Dave are from different continents and never would have met if not for the Oasis. But now Jacqueline, a pink Moluccan cockatoo, and Sparky Dave, a green Amazon, are a couple.

In another cage, Pablo, an orange-wing Amazon, helps his pal, Paco, a Mexican redheaded Amazon who is nearly blind, find the food.

Next door, Jack has plucked off most of his feathers, but that doesn't matter to his partner, also named Paco, this one a female and fellow Amazon, who had rejected other potential roommates. When she saw Jack, "she fell in love with him," Erden says. "She sees his inner beauty," Erden adds wryly.

Partners even accompany sick birds to the hospital, which is in a nearby trailer covered with vivid bird murals. Mickey, a Maximilian pionus, is there because he has cancer, and Minnie keeps him company. "They always do better if their mate stays with them," Erden says.

Other cages contain Sergeant Peeps, an elderly lovebird who has a beak injury, cockatoos too old to remain outside, and a lovebird who had a stroke and can't fly. A vet visits regularly, but Erden sometimes sleeps on the foldout couch to be near a patient who needs medicine, as she did most recently for a wheezy duck named Marvin.

When the inevitable happens, the birds are buried in the adjacent cemetery, a small patch of dirt with stones marking the graves. A small statue of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals, oversees it.