A haven for forsaken birds Arizona shelter for the ill, outcast

July 16, 2006|Peter Zheutlin, Globe Correspondent

BENSON, Ariz. -- A few weeks before a family vacation last February, we happened to watch ``The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill." It's a delightfully whimsical documentary about a flock of wild cherry-headed conures and the man, Mark Bittner, who serves as the birds' guardian angel from his apartment on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. At the end of the film, we learned that Bittner had taken one of the parrots, Mingus, who could no longer survive in the wild, to a place called The Oasis Sanctuary near Benson.

As it happened, we had plans to be in Benson, an hour east of Tucson, to tour the spectacular Kartchner Caverns, discovered in the 1970s by two amateur spelunkers from the nearby University of Arizona. Because my son, Noah, 11, is passionate about birds, we decided to visit Mingus, who stole our hearts by dancing in perfect rhythm to Bittner's guitar music in the film.

The Oasis is far off the beaten path in the San Pedro Valley, some 20 miles north of Benson. Nearly half of those 20 miles is unpaved road that winds through low hills covered with mesquite and cactus.

Don't plan on dropping by unannounced, however. The Oasis is not a zoo or a tourist attraction; it's a haven for more than 400 exotic birds, most with special needs, that are guaranteed loving care for the rest of their natural lives. No bird that comes to the Oasis is sold, adopted , or traded.

Sybil Erden, 55, the driving force behind the Oasis, is an Arizona transplant with the fortitude and attitude of her native Bronx. In the early 1990s, Erden took in her first orphaned exotic bird and cared for it at her home in Phoenix. Others followed as word spread that Erden had a soft spot for exotic birds that were neglected, abandoned, injured, handicapped, or unmanageable.

``I started to realize," said Erden, ``that there was a need for avian welfare and adoption and within two years I had 60 birds."

When Rainbow, a scarlet macaw, arrived in 1996 (Rainbow's owner decided his brilliant coloring didn't match her decor), Erden started scouring southern Arizona and New Mexico for a place to move the nonprofit Oasis, someplace where the weather, zoning, and financing would allow her to spread her wings, so to speak. She found it in an abandoned pecan orchard north of Benson. Erden traded her house for a series of trailers in the middle of nowhere.

``This work selected me, rather than I it," she said. "My artistic career was moving forward and I was having success, but I always felt the need to give back. I had the background in both for-profit and non profit entrepreneurship and the means to start the Oasis. I love animals and at that point in my life the birds needed me more than anything else needed me."