page_title: List of largest birds
section_title: Cranes and allies (Gruiformes)
hierarchical_section_title: List of largest birds / Largest extant birds / By families / Cranes and allies (Gruiformes)
caption_attribution_description: Corvus crassirostris English: Thick-billed Raven Deutsch: Erzrabe
context_page_description: The largest extant bird species, a member of the Struthioniformes, is the ostrich, from the plains of Africa and Arabia. A large male ostrich can reach a height of 2.8 metres and weigh over 156 kilograms. A mass of 200 kg has been cited for the ostrich but no wild ostriches of this massive weight have been verified. Eggs laid by the ostrich can weigh 1.4 kg and are the largest eggs in the world today.
  The largest extant bird by wingspan is the wandering albatross of the sub-Antarctic oceans. The maximum dimensions in this species are a length of 1.44 m and a wingspan of 3.65 m.
context_section_description: The males of the Eurasian great bustard (Otis tarda) and the African kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) are the heaviest birds capable of flight, averaging up to 16 kg (35 lb) and weighing 2 to 3 times as much as their female counterparts. It is not resolved if one of these species is larger than the other, but both can reach a weight of at least 21 kg (46 lb) and measure up to 1.53 m (5.0 ft) long. Some kori bustards have been reported from 23 kg (51 lb) to even 40 kg (88 lb), but all such reports are unverified or dubious.
  The tallest flying bird on earth, also represented in the Gruiformes, is the sarus crane (Grus antigone) of Southern Asia and Australia, which can reach a height of 2 m (6.6 ft). Heavier cranes are reported in other species, the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis) and the Siberian crane (G. leucogeranus), both from Northeast Asia and both at up to 15 kg (33 lb), as opposed to a top weight of 12.8 kg (28 lb) in the sarus. Wingspan in both the largest cranes and the largest bustards can range up to 2.5–3 m (8.2–9.8 ft).
  The most species-rich family in this order, the rails, reaches their largest size in the bulky takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri) of New Zealand, an endangered species that can weigh up to 4.2 kg (9.3 lb) and measure 0.65 m (2.1 ft) long. The aforementioned "terror bird", Brontornis burmeisteri, has traditionally been classified as a member of this order, although this may not be an accurate classification.
caption: The thick-billed raven shares the title of the largest songbird with its common cousin.
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