GARY T. KUBOTA / GKUBOTA@STARBULLETIN.COM Wild chickens have ruffled the feathers of some parishioners at Trinity Episcopal Church by the Sea in Kihei, Maui. The birds have roosted on the pews and altars.

Congregating chickens are
devout about Maui church

Clucking wild birds are a noisy
nuisance for the parishioners

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By Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.com

KIHEI, Maui >> Wild chickens have run afoul of parishioners at an open-air church in South Maui.

Some birds roost on the pews at night. In the mornings, bird droppings are everywhere, from the church loft to the altar as well as the sidewalks.

"They come and congregate," said the Rev. Morley Frech, pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church by the Sea. "I don't know if they have their own worship services at night or what it is, but they make quite a mess."

Frech said the church has been worried that the birds are creating a public health hazard. He's hoping someone will come up with a solution.

He's counted as many as 48 chickens and estimates there may be as many as 200 of them living in an adjacent lot of about 20 acres covered with wild kiawe brush.

"They have chickens faster then we can get rid of them," he said. The wild chickens have picked at the church shrubbery and burrowed in the ground to lay their eggs.

"It plays havoc with the landscape. We try to shoo them away but it doesn't do any good," he said. "They're smart."

GARY T. KUBOTA / GKUBOTA@STARBULLETIN.COM The Rev. Morley Frech of Trinity Episcopal Church by the Sea has problems with wild chickens congregating at night and in the morning on church grounds. A growing number of chickens have roosted on the altar and pews of his open-air church in Kihei.

And these chickens are not chicken when they're hungry.

Frech said the chickens, which usually come out of the brush onto church property in the mornings, were becoming so bold he had to ask people who received food from a breakfast program not to feed the birds.

Frech said the adult chickens are hard to catch and are able to fly onto tree tops.

Church volunteer groundskeeper Mark LaBatte said a number of hunters have tried various methods to capture the chickens.

Trap cages have only caught a few. Other hunters have been unsuccessful in using throw nets and nets shot out of a rifle, he said.

LaBatte, who uses a high-pressured water hose to clean the bird droppings from the sidewalks, said these chickens are wild and wary.

"The hunters come back with a net full of thorns," LaBatte said. "Nobody catches these chickens." Nobody also appears to have the solution, according to Frech.

Maui Humane Society officials say they don't have cages designed to trap chickens.

Society animal control supervisor Aimee Anderson said the chicken hunters cannot use poison or discharge a firearm because of the chickens' proximity to residences.

The state vector control branch said it catches rodents and insects, but not chickens.

Frech, who has a congregation of 225 members, responds quickly to the question, "Which came first -- the chicken or the church?"

"In this case, the church did," he said.

Frech said the problems with the chickens didn't arise until after Hurricane Iniki in 1992 and he believes the high winds blew them into the nearby kiawe brush.

The church sits on leased state land where Hawaiians established a Congregationalist church in 1852. The church is actually the remains of an old church with coconut trees serving as a cover.

Frech said kiawe trees were growing inside the church when his Episcopal church applied to establish a place of worship there in 1976.

Frech said in the mornings when he's delivering his sermon, the roosters occasionally crow but the noise hasn't bothered him.

"Fortunately, there are more hens and there's not an overabundance of roosters," he said.