Elephant bird determined that "Vorombe titan" reached weights of and stood tall, making it the world's largest bird, slightly larger than the much older "Dromornis stirtoni". Elephant birds have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions, though it is unclear whether he was repeating folk tales passed on from generations earlier. In 1659, Flacourt wrote of the "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places
Nizki Island and kelp-marked shoals. Foxes were introduced to Nizki Island by Russian fur traders in the 19th century. This decimated the population of many bird species on the island. The last fox was removed from Nizki Island in 1976, and now Aleutian Canada Geese (once believed to be extinct), Puffins, and Aleutian Terns are common on the island. Nizki Island Nizki Island (Avayax̂ in Aleut) is an uninhabited island in the Aleutian Islands in the U.S. state of Alaska. Located at , it is the middle island of the Semichi Islands group of the Near Islands. Flanked by Shemya to the