Largest organisms is frequently poorly documented and many are subject to conjecture and estimation. The largest living bird, a member of the Struthioniformes, is the common ostrich ("Struthio camelus"), from the plains of Africa and Arabia. A large male ostrich can reach a height of and weigh over . A mass of has been cited for the common ostrich but no wild ostriches of this weight have been verified. Eggs laid by the ostrich can weigh and are the largest eggs in the world today. The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds ("Aepyornis") of Madagascar, which
Des Murs's wiretail to determine how wiretails find a mate. As is typical for south temperate insectivorous birds, during the breeding season of October to February Des Murs's wiretail lays a clutch of two to four eggs, but for the bird's mass these are about the largest eggs of any passerine bird. At long and wide, they weigh twice as much as expected for a 10 gram passerine and a clutch of four weighs more than the adult female - a feat equalled only by much more fecund kinglets. Little is known about incubation, fledging periods, or postfledging parental care due to the