As city officials ponder how best to eradicate the feral fowl disturbing the peace on our fair island, I would like to use my space this week in defense of chickens.

I have lived in rural areas and even down the street from an egg farm on Maui, and can attest firsthand that chickens are a sleep-shattering nuisance. They also can tear up your yard and drop poop willy-nilly.

Yet I have a newfound appreciation, even affection, for the birds as a result of my daily walks around the government buildings along Punchbowl Street.

An empty-nester whose own chickies have flown the coop, I’ve developed an attachment to the area’s small resident population of chickens, whose nests are rarely empty.

I get excited whenever one of the birds appears with a new clutch of fuzzballs, and monitor their progress, counting the babies at each sighting and fretting over the frailer ones that lag behind. The mother hens are ever-vigilant and fierce in protecting their little ones; it’s touching when they gather their brood under wing to settle in for a cozy rest.

Nature can seem cruel at times, and inevitably the feathered family dwindles. The hardy few survivors don’t seem that different from the human flocks I’ve observed. Mock conflict flares up between the young males as they scrap and test each other’s dominance. They are the first to leave; I’ve seen sisters linger to near adulthood.

Sooner or later, though, all the offspring disperse and the mother hen is alone again.

But never for long. Circle of life, I say, circle of life.

Aside from soothing my maternal impulses, there’s another reason I value urban wildlife, even chickens — and have you noticed the ducks, too? At a time when development continues to irretrievably transform the city’s landscape, I look for nature where I can find it: in the undulating Moorish idols, yellow tang and other tropical fish that swim beneath the discarded Solo cups and oil slicks at Aloha Tower, and in the stocky aukuu (black-crowned night herons) that perch motionless along the concrete banks of the tainted drainage canal at Ala Moana Beach Park across from palatial condos.

At Kahului Airport on Maui, a $56 million access road with faux waterfalls recently opened and a $340 million rental car complex with 4,500 parking stalls is under construction. Yet the feral chickens that have always loitered at the airport entrance and in the parking lots are keepin’ it real.

And whenever Honolulu starts getting all high muck-a-muck, one needn’t look far to be reminded that even in the highest seats of power, there are chickens to keep us humble.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@staradvertiser.com.