Five seagulls, specks against the sky, winged east across Forward Landfill one recent sunny morning.
Dave Rivera spotted them. He lowered his head and spoke to a speckled peregrine falcon perched on his arm.
"Bill, don't let me down," Rivera said. And with that, Bill was gone.
He shot through the air, first soaring upward and then diving back. Rivera kept him close by swinging, lasso-style, a leather lure baited with pulpy quail meat.
Bill never went near those lofty gulls, but they saw him well enough. They abruptly turned left and, rather than circling the garbage patch, vanished to the north.
"Those seagulls never get a break," boasted Rivera, 44, from Idaho. "I push them. I'll drive them all of the way off the property."
Plans to expand Forward, the largest landfill in San Joaquin County, were opposed earlier this year by some pilots who use nearby Stockton Metropolitan Airport, about one mile west. More garbage means more scavenging birds and a greater chance of a bird strike, they said.
A draft environmental impact report said 17 bird strikes had taken place at the Stockton airport since 1990, a number that Forward officials said was not substantial.
Nevertheless, they're now rewriting the report to address these and other concerns. One new strategy includes hiring a falconer - Rivera, and his nine birds of prey - to bully the gulls until they give up and forage someplace else.
Flares, whistles and bird bombs make a lot of noise, but it's the falcons that make the most difference, officials say.
"You just see those gulls bolt the other way. It's terror," said Kevin Basso, general manager of Allied Waste Services, which operates the privately owned Forward.
The landfill, which is closed to the general public, faces opposition on several counts. Adjacent landowners worry about traffic and pollution; the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation has complained about the conversion of agricultural land to satisfy the expansion.
But as for the birds, Forward believes it has that problem pecked.
On that recent morning when Bill took flight, there were few gulls to be found.
"What I want people to see is that this can be controlled," Basso said.
Rivera will stay at the landfill until spring, when the gulls disappear for the season. He flies all nine raptors at least once a day, always keeping an eye to the sky.
He works sunup to sundown. (The gulls go someplace else at night to roost.)
His truck rolls over the rutted dirt roads that crisscross the active landfill area, where big rigs dump their trash after weighing in. Sometimes, the mere sight of Rivera's truck is enough to scare off the seagulls.
A 120,000-pound machine that flattens and compresses garbage rumbles over the litter field while graceful Bill swoops through the air above.
While this job is only seasonal, Rivera's raptors follow their work across the West. They've protected blueberry fields in the Pacific Northwest and, most recently, vineyards near Soledad.
Each bird is wired so it can be tracked should Rivera's commands be disobeyed. And they are, on occasion. Although the raw quail flesh he keeps in a pouch on his waist is a pretty strong incentive to stick around.
"He is impressive looking, isn't he?" Rivera said as Bill alighted on his arm once more.
Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or
abreitler@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/breitlerblog.
