Birds on duty: Hawks rid regional landfill of seagulls

Julia Staines posed with a hawk at the Waterloo Regional landfill on June 24, 2025. (Karis Mapp/CTV News)

A trio of hawks is keeping a close eye on Waterloo Region’s landfill.

From high atop their posts on Monday, they surveyed their domain, on guard for pests.

The birds were hired to keep the seagull population under control.

But there were few gulls floating through the skies. It’s a sign of a job well done, but officials told CTV News Kitchener, that wasn’t always the case.

“People would bump into [seagulls] with cars and vehicles,” explained Tim Ware, the landfill’s operations supervisor.

“The seagulls would jump up and try to get out of the way, [but] the vehicles couldn’t drive slow enough to avoid seagulls.”

When hundreds of seagulls swarmed the waste management facility, the bird’s droppings also became a health and safety concern.

“We do wash our equipment quite frequently, but it was damaging the equipment,” added Ware.

That’s when Julia Staines, owner of Free Bird Falconry, and her birds were hired for the job in 2015.

Staines has a team of eight birds, including both falcons and hawks. At the landfill, a summer team of three Harris Hawks are hard at work.

“They are a desert bird, so I love them for the summer heat,” said Staines.

“They also are the only type of hawk that hunts in a pack in the wild, so they’re known as the wolves of the sky.”

Maggie, Stella, and Honey make up the trio tasked with keeping the gulls away.

They travel with Staines around the landfill, rotating between posts.

Staines said it is currently a slower season for the hawks, but things will ramp back up in the middle of July.

“That’s when all the birds that are breeding now, they bring the young ones to the site. So those ones haven’t learned yet who I am, who my birds are – but they quickly learn that yes, we are here and we are not leaving,” Staines said.

The region said employing the birds also makes for an eco-friendlier option.

“The landfill doesn’t have a lot of power sources so we couldn’t power any other form of bird control,” Ware explained.

Although the goal is to simply scare away the seagulls, sometimes the hawk’s predatory instinct takes over and they eliminate the target.

“You see it on the Nature Channel all the time, that’s very real. It’s exactly how you’d imagine,” said Ware.

Having grown up with a deep interest and love for birds, Staines said working with the animals is a dream come true.

“They’re not pets but I love them, we’re partners.”