Puffinus and cold waters. These tubenose birds fly with stiff wings, and use a shearing flight technique to move across wave fronts with the minimum of active flight. Some small species, such as the Manx shearwater, are cruciform in flight, with their long wings held directly out from their bodies. Many are long-distance migrants, perhaps most spectacularly the sooty and short-tailed shearwaters, which perform migrations of 14,000 km or more each year. "Puffinus" shearwaters come to islands and coastal cliffs only to breed. They are nocturnal at the colonial breeding sites, preferring moonless nights to minimise predation. They nest in burrows
Chagos Archipelago fuscata"), brown and lesser noddies ("Anous stolidus" and "Anous tenuirostris") wedge-tailed shearwaters ("Puffinus pacificus") and red-footed boobies ("Sula sula"). Land bird fauna is poor and consists of introduced species and recent natural colonisers. Red fody had been introduced and now widespread. Environments of Chagos Archipelago provides rich biodiversity and support varieties of cetacean species within the vicinity, such as three populations of blue whales and toothed whales (sperm, pilot, orca, pseudo-orca, risso's and other dolphins such as spinners, and so on). Dugongs, being locally extinct today, once thrived in the archipelago and the Sea Cow Island was named after the