The crowing starts well before sunrise outside Mason Aiona’s home in Honolulu, Hawaii.
But the 3 am rooster alarm isn’t what bothers the retiree most. It’s spending much of the day shooing away wild chickens digging holes in his yard, enduring constant squawking and feather-flapping, and warning people not to feed the feral birds at a nearby park.
“It’s a big problem,” Aiona said of the roosters, hens and chicks roaming the narrow road between his house and the city park. “And they’re multiplying.”
Communities across the state have been dealing with the birds for years. Honolulu has spent thousands of dollars trapping them, with limited results. Now lawmakers are considering measures that could allow residents to kill feral chickens, designate them a “controllable pest” on public land in Honolulu, and fine people for feeding or releasing them in parks.
Yet what some see as a nuisance, others view as a cultural symbol. Similar tensions have appeared in cities such as Miami that also have wild chicken populations.
Kealoha Pisciotta, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner and animal advocate, opposes killing the birds simply because they are bothersome. Some chickens today descend from those brought by early Polynesian voyagers.
“The moa is very significant,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for chicken. “They were on our voyaging, came with us.”
The Hawaiian Humane Society also opposes allowing residents to kill the chickens for population control unless other strategies are exhausted.
State Rep. Scot Matayoshi, a Democrat representing the Honolulu suburb of Kaneohe, said he began working on chicken-control legislation after hearing from an elementary school teacher whose pupils were being harassed by the birds.
“The children were afraid of them, and they would more aggressively go after the children for food,” he said.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Jackson Sayama, introduced a bill allowing residents to kill feral chickens, saying there are currently limited ways to deal with them.
The method would be left to the residents’ discretion.
Chicken-eradication bills have failed in the past, Matayoshi said, though ideas such as chicken birth control have also been discussed.
For Aiona, who has lived for over 30 years in a valley near downtown Honolulu, the problem is relatively recent. Wild chickens appeared in his neighbourhood about a decade ago and multiplied during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He prefers someone collect the birds and move them to rural farms rather than kill them. Honolulu runs a trapping programme through a pest-control contractor. A weeklong service costs $375 for property owners, plus a $50 cage rental fee and $10 disposal fee per chicken.
More than 1,300 chickens were caught through the programme last year, and complaints rose 51% in 2025, according to the Honolulu Department of Customer Services.
Wild chickens are unlikely to become a cheap meal: their meat is tougher than farm-raised poultry and the birds can carry disease.
Some residents use creative methods to keep them away. One neighbour uses a leaf blower to scare them off. Aiona says his electric blower only works as far as its cord allows.
Tired of warning park-goers not to feed the birds, Aiona now has a simple offer: anyone who wants a chicken can take one.
“No charge,” he said.
Associated Press