Manx shearwater Morten Thrane Brünnich as "Procellaria puffinus" in 1764. The current scientific name "Puffinus" derives from "puffin" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn and puffing, which referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the shearwater, a former delicacy. The original usage dates from at least 1337, but from as early as 1678 the term gradually came to be used for another seabird, the Atlantic puffin. The current English name was first recorded in 1835 and refers to the former nesting of this species on the Isle of Man. The Manx shearwater is with a wingspan and weighs
Wedge-tailed shearwater (in common with the other shearwaters) as an adaptation for swimming. This species is related to the pan-Pacific Buller's shearwater, which differs much in colour pattern, but also has a wedge tail and a thin black bill. They make up the "Thyellodroma" group, a superspecies of the large shearwaters that were for a long time included in the genus "Puffinus". Wedge-tailed shearwaters feed pelagically on fish, squid and crustaceans. Their diet is 66% fish, of which the most commonly taken is goatfish. It was thought that the species mostly took food from surface feeding, observations of feeding wedge-tails suggested that