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
Bird egg birds with small clutch size tended to be indeterminate. Many animals feed on eggs. For example, the principal predators of the black oystercatcher's eggs include raccoons, skunks, mink, river and sea otters, gulls, crows and foxes. The stoat ("Mustela erminea") and long-tailed weasel ("M. frenata") steal ducks' eggs. Snakes of the genera "Dasypeltis" and "Elachistodon" specialize in eating eggs. Humans have a long history of both eating wild bird eggs and raising birds for farmed eggs for consumption. Brood parasitism occurs in birds when one species lays its eggs in the nest of another. In some cases, the host's eggs