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
Long-crested eagle another bird, for example the black sparrowhawk or lizard buzzard. It breeds all year but most eggs are laid in July–November. The female lays 1-2 eggs, and she take most of the burden of incubating them, incubation lasting 42 days, as she incubates the male provides her with food. As is normal in birds of prey the eggs are laid asynchronously, as much as two weeks apart, and the female begins incubation as soon as the first egg is laid which mans that hatching is also asynchronous. When the young hatch they are initially mainly fed by the male. The