Several times a week, Audubon Warden Leroy Overstreet glides up to the rickety old pier on Green Island in the Lower Laguna Madre and makes his rounds.

The 110-acre island northeast of the Arroyo Colorado is home to the world's largest reddish egret colony numbering some 1,000 birds.

The 27 acres that are heavily wooded also provide vital nesting habitat for many other colonial waterbirds.

"It's a place where these birds have been nesting for no telling how many thousand years," said Leroy Overstreet, Warden of Green Island.

The naturally occurring island is owned by the state of Texas, and since 1923 it has been leased to the National Audubon Society that is charged with its protection.

"Everybody really treats the Island with respect, and I have never seen anybody come on to the Island to do any harm to the birds," said Leroy Overstreet.

Even though the island is a mile or so from the mainland, Overstreet occasionally has to eliminate a marauding raccoon or coyote that has swum out to prey on the nesting birds, and one coyote he killed took a heavy toll.

"We started digging in the contents of the stomach out and the there were 27 little baby birds in there along with a bunch of eggs too…had just eaten them so if they eat 27 every day they can do a whole lot of damage," said Leroy Overstreet.

Although Green Island is off limits to the casual visitor, the sanctuary's resident birds are enjoyed by all who ply the waters of the Lower Laguna Madre.