Mr. Ned founded the bird colony in the 1890s — later called Bird City — after plume hunters slaughtered egrets by the thousands for feathers to make fashionable ladies' hats. Mr. Ned gathered up eight young egrets, raised them in captivity on the Island, and released them in the fall to migrate across the Gulf of Mexico. The following spring the birds returned to the Island with others of their species - a migration that continues to this day, as thousands of snowy white egrets and other water birds return to Bird City each spring.