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Chickens in Trees

BY SUZIE PETRYK
March 22, 2024

I was lucky enough to vacation in Kauai last year, one of the oldest
Hawaiian islands. If you ever visit, the first thing that you'll
notice -- the very first thing -- is the chickens.

Everywhere.

At the airport terminal. In the car rental queue. In your motel
parking lot. The afternoon I arrived, I took a Zoom call sitting on
some grass, casting nervous glances at a rooster slowly approaching
me like a Weeping Angel.

I grew used to them over the next couple days, seeing them (almost)
like squirrels in your average U.S. city.

One evening, though, this facade of familiarity was quickly
shattered. Looking over the motel balcony, I could hear occasional
clucks, and I couldn't localize the sources until I saw a chicken
flutter up onto the branch of a short tree, joining its troupe.

Now, there are certain axioms you unwittingly live by, where a single
moment makes you realize that these are not, in fact, axioms -- your
first earthquake breaks "the ground does not move," or your first
pair of glasses breaks "trees are blobs." A colorblind friend had a
moment in art class that broke "peanut butter is green." For me, that
moment in Kauai broke "chickens are not found in trees."

An image of several chickens huddled in tree branches

Source. See this YouTube video for an example of birds in action.

As it turns out, my upbringing in New York was not representative of
the rest of the world -- free-roaming chickens roosting in trees is
entirely common in many areas. It's instinctual. Even domestic
chickens raised in a coop aren't exempt: when deprived of a perch off
of the ground, they get frustrated and scared.^[0]

This doesn't mean that all chickens would prefer to roost in trees,
if available. As I learned from a fantastic paper^[1] by T. Desta, a
professor in Ethiopia, the proportion of chickens roosting in trees
actually varies a lot, possibly due to environmental pressures like
predators or hot ground temperature: e.g., only 1% do this in
Myanmar, 8% in one part of Nigeria and 65% in another.

As I read further, roosting in trees began to sound like the topic of
a self-help book for chickens. They gain confidence in their
abilities to fly and evade predators. They experience less spread of
disease, as the trees have good ventilation and are less soiled and
crowded. They are quarantined from sick chickens that physically
can't make it up the trees. They have better access to tasty fruits
and leaves. Roost in trees today -- it'll change your life! Or your
money back!

Oh, before we get carried away -- the predator situation does seem a
bit more complicated. Chickens are better protected from overhead
enemies like hawks, but can still be attacked by other birds. One
chicken-keeper warned: "If you let your chickens roost in trees you
will likely lose one every so often to the owls."^[2] Predators like
foxes or wolves can climb the trees and snatch chickens, but the
shaking of branches can warn others to flutter away, even hopping to
adjacent trees.

There's also the risk of chickens being stolen, especially prized
egg-laying ones, like in the Sherlockian section title "The case of a
prolific hen experiencing theft" within a paper.^[3]

Probably for the reasons above, the top Google search suggestion is
evident of many a frustrated chicken-keeper:

A screenshot of a Google search for 'chickens roosting in trees',
where the top search suggestion is 'how to stop chickens roosting in
trees'

Coincidentally, writing that led me to search "name for a person who
keeps chickens". That was also pretty fruitful, leading me to:

A photo of chickens, with overlaid text 'If you work on a farm and
your job is to take care of chickens... ...are you a chicken tender?'

Source.

I'd be remiss not to mention the alpha chicken. The alpha chicken
gets to roost on the highest, safest branch of the tree when there's
danger. Very noble. If you build a domestic coop, you should have
just one height of perch, or else the chickens will fight for the
taller one.^[4] Desta writes that this acknowledges..."pecking
order"... while this term did actually originate from chickens'
societal hierarchies, I still read it like the best kind of pun,
where you're not sure if it was intentional. I immediately regretted
not sneaking such a pun into my own papers.

Section divider

One of said pun-less papers led me to a conference in Hawaii, on the
Big Island, a few months later. In place of the chickens, there were
cats, at least near where I stayed in Kona. Lots of cats. We'd see
them in trees too:

A photo of a tree taken from below, with two cats sitting on a tree
branch looking into the camera.

Source: Grace Luo, taken on a morning run we did together.

This begs the question: did the cats eat the chickens and take their
place?

Apparently (well, according to Reddit), the cats usually leave the
chickens alone. Adult chickens can be as large as cats, making them
quite formidable opponents. Large populations of both feral chickens
and feral cats coexist on many parts of the islands. There's even a
debate going on about whether the overpopulation of chickens or cats
should be dealt with first. Chickens are noisy and destroy crops,
yes, but they also create fertilizer and control insects. Cats kill
native birds and spread disease. Yet: "The problem, experts say, is
cats are cute."^[5]

In any case, controlling chicken population is hard. Hawaii lawmakers
are trying to pass a 2024 bill allocating around $50,000 to control
the population in Honolulu.^[6] For now, chickens roam free in Kauai,
drawing interest from tourists like me but are considered pests by
many locals.

Section divider

After that trip, I was on an evening walk in the Berkeley hills when
I heard a weird cackle. Somewhere pretty high in a tree a little ways
away. A few more cackles and I realized -- could it be? -- yes:

A turkey.

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Citations.

^[0] Night-time roosting in laying hens and the effect of thwarting
access to perches. Olsson & Keeling (2000)

^[1] The proclivity of free-ranging indigenous village chickens for
night-time roosting in trees. Desta (2021)

^[2] Farming My Backyard: The Art of Chickens Roosting in Trees

^[3] Predation and theft: the standing threats of the scavenging
chicken production system. Desta (2023)

^[4] Improving Village Chicken Production: A Manual for Field Workers
and Trainers (2009)

^[5] Chicken Control Plan Rekindles Debate: Wild Fowl or Feral Cats
First? Jajko (2022)

^[6] Hawaii SB2401. DOH; Feral Chickens; City and County of Honolulu;
Expenditure Ceiling; Appropriation

Thanks to Ritwik Gupta for encouraging me to write this up!