When Dave Hildreth and his Republic Services team take busloads of teenagers to tour the Arlington landfill, their tour is largely focused on how the facility handles 4,500 tons of trash every day. But their ears perk up when they hear of hawks patrolling the skies.

“Everyone is more fascinated by birds than by other parts of the landfill,” Hildreth said.

Republic is responsible for operating the 774-acre property located at 800 Mosier Valley Road in Euless, adjacent to the planned Viridian community in northwest Arlington. During the winter months, migrating gulls often crowd around trash piles and surrounding communities as they migrate between the Gulf Coast and Canada.

That’s where Roger Crandall and his company, Fal-Tech Inc., keep the gulls away.

Birds can cause major problems for truckers who drop off the waste and use 125,000 pound compactors to push the waste into as little space as possible.

“Before Roger came here, we had times when it was so bad the operators couldn’t even see outside the machines because there were so many birds flying around,” Dickerson said. “It was just solid seagulls.”

Crandall, a master falconer since he was 16, provides bird control services in Arlington, as well as the southeast Fort Worth landfill. His company has also helped shopping malls and the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport deter common grackles and other pest birds from roosting in their buildings.

Because landfills can attract greater numbers of gulls to the area, the birds are also a nuisance to communities surrounding the site, Hildreth said. Crandall’s hawks, including a couple named Jasmine and Thumper, are hired to make sure the gulls don’t stay long.

The gull invasion is at its peak between mid-October and early spring, Crandall said. By mid-April, most of the gulls are already well underway from the Gulf Coast to Canada for mating season.

At least 1,000 stragglers lingered around a huge pile of rubbish on a blustery April morning. Crandall launched a hawk into the sky, sending a large number of gulls packing.

“Wherever the habitats of hawks and gulls overlap, gulls appear on the menu,” Crandall said. “There’s just a deep-rooted fear that goes way back in their DNA, and they’re just very sensitive to the shape of a big hawk. They know it’s a danger and they just want to get out of the area.

But hawks don’t hunt gulls, Crandall added. The birds get all the food they need from him. Their only job is to soar in the sky and urge the herd to keep moving forward.

“Any time a seagull sees one of these birds flying, it knows the difference between that and a red-tailed hawk and some of the other common species here,” he said. “They know a redtail poses no threat, but they’re really, really afraid of these things.”

Crandall said he could not discuss details of his contract with Arlington and Republic Services due to a confidentiality agreement. The US Department of Agriculture is known to charge more than $140,000 to keep gulls away from landfills, he said, and Fal-Tech’s annual rate is about half that price.

There are other ways to control birds, Hildreth said. Other cities have used fireworks and pyrotechnics to scare away gulls, or even used bird bait to poison gulls.

“You could sit here and blast screaming and banging firecrackers all day chasing the birds away, but it’s driving the neighbors crazy,” Hildreth said. “These methods are simply not as effective and anywhere near as humane as this one…We are looking for methods that work in an urban landfill.”

The location of Arlington Landfill near River Legacy Park and Lake Viridian was also a concern for taking the hawk route. Additionally, daily site monitoring by Fal-Tech has proven effective in reducing visual problems experienced by truckers, Hildreth said.

Using falcons for commercial work, as Crandall does in landfills, was not always an easy option. Prior to 2007, falconers had to obtain permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for each specific project where they sought to earn money for bird reduction or the practice of scaring away pest birds with falcons.

Crandall worked with U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, to push the federal agency to issue a more general permit to falconers who wanted to practice bird culling commercially. Crandall was the first to obtain the new special-use permit in late 2007.

Since then, hundreds of licenses have been issued to master falconers, he said, and the industry continues to grow.

“It’s an amazing thing to be able to use this kind of bird control,” Crandall said. “That’s not always the answer. In fact, often that’s not the answer. But there are situations where it’s just a perfect fit in terms of eco-friendliness.