Problem Solving

Is It Illegal to Feed Birds in Hawaii?

Not under any Hawaii statute in force that we found. The 2013 law headlines called a ban only made feeding mess a health nuisance, and a 2025 act deleted it. Every bill that would have made feeding illegal failed.

No, not under state law: we found no Hawaii statute in force that makes it illegal to feed birds on your own property. The one law that ever named bird feeding treated the mess it causes as a health nuisance, not the feeding as an offense, and since May 2025 even that line is gone from the statute.

We read ten rules and bills, eight in the Legislature's own text and two local rules through news reports. The question for pigeons alone, across the mainland cities that do ban it, is in is it illegal to feed pigeons, and how to look up the rules where you live is in neighbors and ordinances.

The rules we read#

Read the "Status" column first. Only three rows are law, and none of them bans feeding birds in a yard.

Every rule that would have reached a backyard feeder was a bill. Every rule that is in force stops at the property line of a park, a beach or a county lot.

Why the answers online disagree#

You will read that Hawaii banned excessive bird feeding in 2013, or that feeding carries fines up to $5,000. Neither is the law.

A headline read as a ban. Hawaii News Now reported the 2013 law as "New Hawaii law bans excessive feeding of birds." The act bans nothing. It adds a line to the Department of Health's list of nuisances, and the station's own account is that the department can warn or order the feeding stopped: a cleanup order, not a fine.

Bills read as statutes. The 25-birds-in-20-feet rule and its fines are in two bills, from 2019 and 2022. Both would have deleted the 2013 line from HRS 322-1, yet it was still there for the 2025 act to strike out, and chapter 322's 2026 contents run from 322-1 to 322-9 with no feeding section. Neither passed.

What the 2013 law did#

HB 619 started as a crime. The House version of HB 619 would have added an offense to the penal code: a person "knowingly feeds a wild or feral bird," a violation the first time and a petty misdemeanor after that. Its definition was "any non-domesticated avian, including pigeons," with chickens left out.

The Senate replaced it. The bill Governor Abercrombie signed on July 8, 2013, HB 619 HD1 SD1, added a second item to the list of nuisances in HRS 322-1: "Odors and filth resulting from a person feeding feral birds." It also amended section 322-6 so that any individual, not only police and physicians, may report a nuisance to the department.

The push came from Pearl City. Representative Gregg Takayama said the law would bring relief to residents "plagued for years by neighbors whose excessive and inconsiderate bird feeding has attracted flocks of several hundred pigeons." A stricter bill that year, HB 15, would have made people liable for damage caused by feral birds they fed; Civil Beat reported it died in the Judiciary Committee.

The department did not use it. Section 322-1 covered nuisances "which in their opinion are dangerous or injurious to health." Act 269 put feral bird filth on the list but kept that test.

The Legislature recorded the result in HB 576 in 2019: the department "has declined to take action" against people who feed feral birds because, in its opinion, the odor and filth "does not rise to the applicable statutory level of being dangerous or injurious to health." HB 1514 repeated the finding in 2022.

2025: the feral bird line is gone#

Act 73 of 2025, HB 1120, was approved on May 19, 2025 and took effect at once. It rewrote section 322-1. In the session law both listed nuisances, methamphetamine lab materials and "Odors and filth resulting from a person feeding feral birds," are bracketed and struck: repealed.

The current text tells the department to examine "all nuisances, such as foul or noxious odors ... sources of filth" that "in their opinion are dangerous or injurious to public health or environmental health, or both," and to "prevent, abate, destroy, or remove" them. The act gives no reason for dropping the bird line.

A neighbor can still report droppings and odor to the department, but feeding birds is no longer named; the mess has to meet the same test as any other filth.

The 25-bird test that never passed#

HB 576 (2019) and HB 1514 (2022) were written to get around the department's health test. HB 1514 puts it this way: "No person shall feed, or permit or allow the placement or discarding of food or food by-products, in a manner that a reasonable person would expect to result in the lingering, roosting, or congregating of twenty-five or more feral birds within a twenty-foot radius." HB 576 has the same test in nearly the same words.

That is an outcome test, like the one Chandler, Arizona adopted for droppings in 2026 (see does a bird feeder count as feeding pigeons). You would not need to mean to feed 25 birds, only to feed in a way a reasonable person would expect to draw them.

Both exempted permitted racing and show pigeons, caged birds, farm poultry and government work. Neither exempted a backyard feeder.

Online summaries get the fines wrong. Both bills kept the chapter's cap, "not more than $10,000 for each separate offense," and added minimums for repeats within five years:

So "$100 to $5,000" describes only the floors in the 2019 bill. Under either bill a single violation could in principle have cost up to $10,000, and the 2019 text sets $2,500 for "a sixth violation" and $5,000 for "a sixth or subsequent violation," so its sixth step is ambiguous.

Whether "feral bird" meant the birds at your feeder depended on the draft:

• Act 269 (2013) never defined it.
• HB 619 HD1 (2013), the House draft, said "wild or feral bird" and meant "any non-domesticated avian, including pigeons," except chickens.
• HB 576 (2019) defined a feral bird as "any bird living in a wild and undomesticated state." Every wild bird, native or not.
• HB 1514 (2022) narrowed it to "any bird having escaped or been released from domestication and reverted to a wild state over several generations": feral pigeons and their like, not wild-born songbirds.

Chickens and other feral animals, 2025 and 2026#

SB 1537 (2025), introduced by Senator Tim Richards, citing toxoplasmosis in monk seals, would have barred feeding a feral non-native animal "on state land within one-half mile of the ocean or a stream." It does not define the term or mention birds. It was carried over and re-referred on January 21, 2026, and has gone no further.

HB 2561 HD2 (2026) is a chicken bill. For public land in any city of "three hundred thousand or more," which its findings tie to Honolulu, it would have banned feeding feral chickens or placing attractants for them, with civil fines up to $250, $500 and $1,000 within a year. It passed the House on March 5, 2026 and was deferred in two Senate committees on March 20.

What became law, as Act 169 on June 26, 2026, was SB 2892, which in its final form only appropriates $50,000 for fiscal year 2026-2027 "for the city and county of Honolulu to facilitate the receipt, handling, and humane disposition of feral chickens that have already been caught." No feeding ban survived.

Parks and county land#

Where feeding is restricted in Hawaii, it is restricted on public land.

• Honolulu parks. The city Department of Parks and Recreation rules, as the Star-Bulletin quoted them in 2005, make it unlawful to "feed any animal or bird when signs are posted prohibiting such feeding." The deputy parks director said then that "enforcement becomes an issue."
• Hawaii County. Ordinance 25-63 (Bill 51) bans feeding feral or stray animals on county property from January 1, 2026: up to $50 for a first offense and up to $500 after that. Reports describe it as aimed at cats and pigs, and it does not apply to private property. Cat colonies at feeders are covered in cats and feeders.

Mainland bans follow the same pattern; see seagull and duck feeding laws.

A Hawaii feeder the neighbors can live with#

The complaints behind every bill were about flocks, droppings and smell. A yard that never draws a crowd to the ground was not their target.

• Use 25 birds in 20 feet as a yardstick. It is not law, but it is the number two bills chose.
• Stop scattering. No seed on the ground, no platform feeder or ground feeder, no bread or rice thrown on the lawn (see bread and kitchen scraps).
• Change the seed. White millet and cracked corn feed pigeons and doves. Sunflower hearts in a tube feeder leave little on the ground.
• Exclude the big birds. A caged feeder keeps out anything pigeon-sized.
• Clean up. The 2013 nuisance was "odors and filth." Catch spill with the methods in seed mess, hulls and dead grass, which also keeps rats and mice away, and wash feeders on the schedule in how to clean a feeder.

The 2019 findings also name avian pox as a disease feral birds carry. If birds at your feeder show warty growths, see growths on feet and face.

Where this page stops applying#

• The health nuisance power. If the department judges your feeding mess dangerous or injurious to public or environmental health, it can still order it abated.
• County codes. We read Hawaii County's ordinance through news reports and Honolulu's park rule as quoted in 2005, and did not read Kauai or Maui codes.
• Leases, condos and HOAs. A lease or association rule can ban feeding no statute touches. See neighbors and ordinances.
• Killing or trapping birds. This page is about feeding. Federal crow rules have their own Hawaii line, covered in is it illegal to feed crows.
• Next session. Feeding bills have come back in 2013, 2019, 2022, 2025 and 2026. A new one could pass.

This is a reading of statutes, bills and local rules, not legal advice.