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 nest bird. The flow-on consequence of this is that nest insulation is also related to parent mass. The "saucer" or "plate" nest, though superficially similar to a cup nest, has at most only a shallow depression to house the eggs. The "platform" nest is a large structure, often many times the size of the (typically large) bird which has built it. Depending on the species, these nests can be on the ground or elevated. In the case of raptor nests, or "eyries" (also spelt "aerie"), these are often used for many years, with new material added each breeding season. In some