Inspired by the story of abandoned aviaries in India whose birds kept returning to raise their young, Edward Avery McIlhenny set out around 1895 to help save the Snowy Egret, whose numbers had fallen sharply because plumes for women’s hats were in heavy demand. At Willow Pond on Avery Island, he built a dam to expand the wet area to thirty-five acres and suspended an enormous flying cage of poultry netting over the water, knowing egrets preferred to nest above water where swimming alligators discouraged predators. He hand-raised eight young snowy egrets there, then released them to migrate south that fall. The next spring, six returned, paired off, and hatched eight chicks, and this pattern continued. By the spring of 1911, McIlhenny estimated that one hundred thousand birds occupied the rookery known as Bird City, which significantly helped revive south Louisiana’s egret population. Theodore Roosevelt called it “the most noteworthy reserve in the country,” and McIlhenny’s work showed that private individuals could make enormous advances in wildlife conservation.