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
Scrambled Eggs (1939 film) in their nests up above tell him to "Be quiet!" and boast about their own well-behaved families (i.e., their eggs), Peterkin decides to get back at them. He sneaks up the massive "Maternity Tree", and covertly switches all the eggs in all the nests. Soon, the eggs hatch — each bird couple has a baby bird of a type different from themselves: for example, the canaries hatch a pirate-talking parrot; the tiny English sparrows hatch a huge mockingbird, who quickly begins "mocking" the sparrow father by speaking in an English accent. The father birds, upset and very suspicious of their