Vocal Exotic Birds Ruffle Feathers in Ojai Ranch Area

The squawking that is coming out of an Ojai avocado orchard these days isn’t just from the 140 parrots and macaws that nest beneath the trees.

Some is coming from neighboring ranchers who are crying foul over a dispute caused by crying fowl.

One group of Hendrickson Road residents contends that it is being intimidated by a $3-million lawsuit aimed at silencing complaints about the birds’ screeches and screams.

But aviary operator Dai Leon complains that she and a group of supporters are being wronged by neighbors who have teamed up to slander and harass her and falsely accuse her birds of disturbing the peace.

“The sounds are very musical,” Leon said. “You hear them in the morning when they’re being fed and in the evening at happy hour--when they’re happy and singing.”

The orchard that covers part of her three-acre spread forms a jungle-like setting for her exotic birds. “It’s just like a magic forest with their little voices,” she said.

It’s more like the dark woods of Count Dracula’s Transylvania, according to neighbors.

“Singing? It’s shrieking. Squalling. Squealing,” said Robert Beusman, who lives 250 feet away. “It’s like a woman screaming 18 hours a day. Every person that comes here to visit asks if there’s some sort of torture or murder occurring.

“The cries themselves are astonishingly ugly, akin to hoarse, human shrieks of pain.”

Others living in the rural neighborhood three miles east of Ojai have outlined their unhappiness through petitions and letters and hours of public testimony before Ventura County officials, as have supporters of the aviary.

But some opponents have grown cautious of talking about Leon and her birds. They say they are fearful of being added to the growing list of defendants in the slander suit that Leon has filed.

“She’s got everybody afraid,” said one neighbor, who asked not to be identified. “She slapped a lawsuit on the bird club president when she said something. A lady down the street was served with a suit when she left the Planning Commission meeting after testifying about the birds. She has 100 John Doe things on the suit. I don’t want to end up one of the John Does.”

The dispute has cast an unlikely gloom over sunny ranchland that lies in a valley at the edge of the Las Padres National Forest, a few miles from the historic nesting area of the California condor.

The sprawling houses of gentleman farmers are tucked away among 25-year-old groves of citrus and avocado trees on two- and three-acre lots. Tending of the trees is a part-time avocation for most of the growers, some of whom have fled Los Angeles for the solitude of the country.

That’s why parrots have been a sore subject for nine years for many living next to one-lane Hendrickson Road.

When Leon decided in 1980 to turn a longtime bird-breeding hobby into a business, the fledgling “Bird in the Hand Exotic Bird Farm” prompted complaints that led to a series of inspections by county planners, building inspectors and health experts. They found several building and zoning violations.

According to county records, officials initiated court proceedings in 1987 to force Leon to either halt her commercial aviary business or obtain proper permits for it. Nine months ago, Leon agreed to comply with the county’s demands.

County planners worked through the spring and summer to draw up a list of restrictions and requirements that they intended to ask Leon to meet. As part of that process, they asked the neighborhood for suggestions and comments.

That’s when feathers began to fly.

As Leon rallied her supporters, aviary opponents did the same. Both sides flooded the planners’ office with petitions and letters that offered starkly contrasting views of the bird farm and Leon’s treatment of birds.

According to Leon, that’s when her enemies stepped over the line.

In the lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 23 in Ventura Superior Court, Leon and Jill Denton, her business partner, claimed that Leon had been falsely accused of torturing birds and selling sick macaws, cockatoos and parrots. They charged that some opponents had tried to organize a letter-writing campaign against her to a popular magazine for bird lovers. And they alleged that one opponent referred to the farm’s bird clinic as “Frankenstein’s lab.”

The suit named Hendrickson Road neighbor Stanley Clark, Simi Valley Bird Club leader Patricia Barbeau, bird owner Jorjann Carlson of Orange County and veterinarian Richard Woerpel, also of Orange County. It also listed 100 John Does.

The list of named plaintiffs was expanded two weeks ago when county planning commissioners met to hammer out the final conditions of Leon’s aviary permit.

Opponents were jarred when Hendrickson Road residents Karol and Pat Vardell were served as defendants moments after they spoke against Leon’s permit application.

The Vardells said they have been advised by their lawyers not to discuss the lawsuit. Attorneys for Woerpel and Barbeau have indicated plans to fight the lawsuit at a hearing scheduled Nov. 7. Carlson could not be reached this week; Clark refused to comment.

Kenneth G. Eade, Leon’s lawyer, said the Vardells were served at the hearing because of convenience, not because of their testimony that day. “We’re not contemplating any action against any other neighbors at this time,” Eade said Tuesday.

But some who live within earshot of the Bird in the Hand farm consider the lawsuit as injury added to insult. Shortly after the Vardells were served Oct. 12, the Planning Commission voted 3 to 0 to let Leon continue her bird business.

As a condition of their approval, officials set a 150-bird limit on the farm and limited bird sales to four customers per day, by appointment only. The commission required Leon to install sound barriers that would lower aviary noise by 20 decibels.

Neighbors say the sound requirement may be difficult to meet. Leon agrees.

“It’s impossible. It’s the equivalent of asking a pedestrian to levitate across the street,” Leon said. “We are going to try to negotiate a compromise with the county.”

She said she would like to live in peace with her neighbors.

“I moved here 14 years ago to raise our own food and raise animals,” said Leon, 48. “After that, I decided to raise birds that are endangered. Raising endangered species in Ojai is the appropriate thing to do. Ojai means nest in the Chumash Indian language.”

Her colorful birds, bred from 70 pairs of exotic birds housed in cages scattered beneath her avocado trees, are healthy, she said. They live to be 100 years old and sell for $150 to $9,000 each.

Leon has converted part of her two-story house into a clinic where 25 newly hatched baby birds are being cared for. Another area is a showroom that is lined by cages that display some of the 50 species of exotic birds that she raises.

Some of her favorites, such as a rare yellow-feathered Queen of Bavaria conure, which Leon describes as one of only 2,000 left in the world, live in cages in her upstairs living room.

“I feel a personal guilt and shame that man is destroying the rain forest,” Leon said as a pink-fringed white Moluccan cockatoo named Freckles side-stepped its way along a wrought-iron stairway banister leading toward the house’s front door.

“Hi, Freckles,” the bird said quietly. When it was carried onto the front porch, however, Freckles let out a long, loud screech. Leon quickly explained that Freckles doesn’t go outside very often.

Leon said she does not allow visitors to walk through the overgrown, jungle-like aviary.

But a county inspector who went in June 22 concluded that it is clean--and quiet.

“Bird droppings had been collected in plastic sealed bags and deposited in a dumpster,” reported Steve Mattern, county health specialist. “All areas . . . were maintained at optimum sanitation.” He added that there were “no visibly sick birds,” “no nuisance-causing odor” and “undetectable noise levels.”

An engineer hired by Leon to measure aviary noise stated in a report filed with the county that “the exotic bird noise was not significant . . . no more apparent than typical wild bird noise in an orchard.”

“When I first took this on, it seemed so simple,” said John Bencomo, the county planner in charge of the case. “But it grew to be so complicated and so emotional.”

Aviary opponents say they are not giving up.

“People are awakened from sleep by those birds,” said Beusman, a movie writer-director whose latest film, “Trust Me,” will be released in about two weeks.

“I think our next step will have to be to go to the EPA. This is the most clear case of noise pollution in the world.”