Berry Noisy Fields : Agriculture: Hungry birds descend on farms as growers try just about anything to frighten them away.

The strawberry fields of Ventura County have come to life in recent weeks with the sound of rocket fire, noise bombs, whistles, police sirens and clanking pots and pans.

Adding to the general din are the shouts and screams of farm workers and a musical background of Mexican ranchera songs blasting from radios set at full volume.

The noises are not meant to terrorize the workers, but to scare off birds. It’s this way every year at the start of the harvest season. And in this, the fifth consecutive drought year, the fields are noisier than ever.

“We try everything, but the birds just won’t go away,” said Emilio Ramirez, 31, a foreman at the Wagon Wheel Ranch in Oxnard. “It doesn’t rain and there’s no food in the mountains, so all the birds come down here and eat until they’re full.”

Farmers and pickers estimate that as much as 30% of the January and February crop has been lost to birds despite unprecedented efforts to chase them away.

In some fields, the crew of pajareros , or bird chasers, has been doubled from years past. To complement the sound devices, growers are increasingly turning to fishing nets and nylon covers to protect the fields. Model airplanes are being flown to frighten the intruders away.

But nothing seems to work.

“We shoot rockets at them and they just duck and go on eating,” said Pedro Valenzuela, one of nine bird chasers working full time on the 190-acre Wagon Wheel field.

The pajareros ‘ worst enemies come in two sizes: big, yellow-chested meadowlarks, which operate alone, and tiny sparrows, which attack in flocks.

The larks bite off the ripe edges of the fruit while leaving the rest to rot. The sparrows bite off strawberry seeds, which causes the fruit to dehydrate and burn.

Conventional bird-chasing methods have proven completely ineffective, field workers say. “In the first week of the harvest we put up scarecrows, and the birds stayed away from them,” said pajarero Carlos Ramirez as he drove a flatbed truck around the fields with a police siren sounding at full blast. “But they figured out real quick that they’re not real people, and now they just use the dummies as resting sites.”

Ramirez loaded his pistol with a 15-millimeter Moog Screamer Siren rocket and fired it toward a scarecrow. The rocket sounded like a vulture’s scream, but the birds didn’t seem to mind. A few flew about 50 yards, landed on another patch and resumed eating.

No sooner had they landed than Felipe Carrillo, 27, started running toward them, whistling and waving a sport coat.

“This is kind of fun, and it beats picking strawberries,” Carrillo said. “But sometimes I can’t feel my feet from so much running and walking.”

At the Wagon Wheel field, bird chasing is a grueling, 11-hour-a-day job.

“It doesn’t matter what you throw at them,” said Wagon Wheel Ranch owner Mike Serro. “When the birds are hungry, they just won’t move.”

Over the years, farm workers have had to discard some of their weapons in the bird wars. Three years ago, for example, workers at the Wagon Wheel field stopped killing birds with shotguns.

“There were a few incidents, so the patron stopped giving us live ammunition,” Ramirez said. “A couple of workers got shot by accident and that was bad, but after a pajarero who was having personal problems put a shotgun to his head and killed himself, they took the guns away from us.”

Last month, Serro also banned propane detonator noise bombs at Wagon Wheel after nearby residents--some of them jittery because of the Persian Gulf War--asked the farmer to put an end to the thundering practice.

This year Serro is experimenting with new anti-bird techniques. For the first time, he has covered 14 acres of the most vulnerable patches--those closest to houses and trees--with fishing nets and nylon sheets. But the covers are both expensive and hard to come by.

“They cost $400 to $500 per acre, but you can’t find them anywhere,” Serro said. “Everybody is sold out.”

Serro is especially excited about the latest addition to his arsenal, the remote-control model airplane.

“We use them to follow the birds around until they leave the fields,” he said. “The birds always come back, but we’re able to get rid of them for awhile.”

The pajareros , on the other hand, aren’t nearly as impressed.

“The planes work fine when the birds are flying, but when they’re on the field feeding themselves, they don’t care if the little airplane is flying over them,” said Jose Alfaro, 23. “Me? I prefer to shoot ‘em with the rockets.”

Serro, the ranch owner, said he’s getting desperate.

“Birds have always been a problem,” he said, “but nobody knew it would get this bad.”