SPECIAL REPORT: Oil on the Beach : ALONG THE BARRICADES : BRIAN LEANZA : At 16, youngest volunteer at Huntington Beach bird-rescue center.

Brian Leanza was young, as bird rescuers go--looking better suited for a Motley Crue concert than a rescue mission.

At 16, Brian was the youngest volunteer at the Huntington Beach bird-rescue center.

In a heavy black leather jacket and faded black jeans, wearing a silver dagger earring and rough whiskers, he seemed out of place on the beach.

But since Wednesday, Brian had built bird pens, held down birds as they were cleaned, nailed down floor mats and crumpled newspapers.

“I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile for the birds by being here,” he said, taking a 15-minute break. “The birds look so tired. They look like they need all the help they can get. So I’m here for them.

“I think of birds as people,” said Brian, who wants to be a game warden or a narcotics officer. “I kind of feel responsible for them, because I think if I were in some sort of trouble the birds would try to help me out.” Brian heard of the oil spill from his aunt, a wildlife biologist for the State Department of Fish and Game. Since arriving at the center Wednesday night, he has stopped only to go home to Orange for sleep. He doesn’t plan to stop working until the danger has passed.

On Thursday and Friday, Brian hitched rides at 5:30 a.m. from his aunt. As a sophomore taking independent study at Parkside High School, he says he is not missing any classes.

It had been 36 hours since the spill and Brian admitted that he was tired. His hands were marked with tiny scratches and blackened from crumbling newspapers for the western grebes.

“It’s only when I stop moving that I feel it in my legs the most,” Brian said. “But it’s all right. Maybe I’m too tired to be tired.”