'This is the man cave," said pilot Rick Tutt as we ducked inside a dim hangar.

Tutt smacked a button, and the 50-foot hangar door rolled up. The sun poured in on a Piper Malibu airplane.

Unlike the posh destinations to which Tutt flies his clients, we were going to fly over the dump.

Forward Landfill is imprudently located along the approach to Stockton Metropolitan Airport's main runway. The dump's owner, Allied Waste Services, wants to increase its size by 184 acres, about 25 percent.

That will attract more birds. Birds and planes don't mix. The most famous example is 2009's U.S. Airways Flight 1549. Geese struck it on takeoff and fritzed its engines. In a hair-raising save, the captain ditched into the Hudson River.

Tutt contends birds are already a hazard at Stockton's airport. He recalled a March 31 close call. He was taking off from the main runway, called 2-9er.

"I went to take off from 2-9er right, and as I'm lifting off, a flock of 50 seagulls lifted off from the left runway," he recounted. "One went over the top. A couple of 'em went underneath me. I think the ones that went underneath me got a haircut."

Tutt believes the landfill brought the birds to the vicinity.

"We see them circling the landfill," he said. "They're going to the dump site looking for trash to eat. Anywhere from just above it to several hundred feet."

Tutt rolled the plane out. The morning was clear. We squeezed into the cabin. Taxiing to the runway, Tutt lifted off. The plane climbed to 3,300 feet.

"I want to show you how an expanded dump site, which is a bird attractant, could severely impact our approach to the airport," said Tutt.

He circled around to the southeast to approach landing at the airport the way most planes do. Two-9er is the main runway because, at 9,600 feet, it is the longest.

The runway came around, five miles ahead, pointing straight at us. We descended. When the plane was at 700 feet altitude and only one mile out, the sprawling landfill passed beneath us to the north.

Federal Aviation Administration safety guidelines say to minimize bird hazards, landfills should be 10,000 feet from airports. This one is less than 5,000 feet away.

"No birds today," Tutt said, perhaps annoyed the birds were not cooperating. "Generally we see birds. They're mostly seagulls. But we see hawks and crows and - there's one right there!" he cried.

A black bird flashed past.

I didn't have time to identify the kind. The plane was darting at 110 knots, about 126 mph, plus whatever speed the bird was traveling in the opposite direction.

At that speed, birds puncture planes like missiles. Were a bird to strike the windscreen, "It would probably fracture the windscreen," Tutt said.

The acrylic windscreen is much stronger than glass; at high altitude, however, the cabin is pressurized. "It could blow out on you," Tutt said.

At low altitude, when the cabin is depressurized, "It could cave in on us and injure us," Tutt said. "It would be shards of plastic. We could get cut."

We landed. Point taken.

"Our concern is we come in at a prescribed approach, at an exact angle, coming out of the clouds and we have these birds," said Tutt. "There'd be no escape for us."

Calls to Forward Inc. were not returned.

In its Draft Environmental Impact Report, the company proposed to ease bird hazards by limiting the size of surface ponds as much as possible. It also proposed using noise-makers and "other measures as necessary."

However, in a May 18 memo, General Manager Kevin Basso of Allied Waste asked county planners to pause the environmental review process so his people could revise the proposal to reflect people's concerns.

Supervisor Leroy Ornellas said bird hazard is a serious issue.

"We need to very carefully scrutinize what the expansion of that facility's impact will be on the airport," Ornellas said.

Ornellas said he heard one of the "other measures" under consideration is using peregrine falcons to chase away the birds.

"Now, where it chases 'em off to, I don't know," Ornellas said. "That's another question in itself."

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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.