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
San Benedicto Island location where several seabirds of the tropical Eastern Pacific come to breed. Taxa breeding on San Benedicto are: The nearly extinct Townsend's shearwater ("Puffinus auricularis") does not seem to breed on San Benedicto, but can sometimes be seen feeding offshore. Given that there are no invasive species on San Benedicto and also no predators apart from the frigatebirds, the island might be highly suitable for establishing a new colony. Indeed, it bred here before the 1952 eruption; shearwaters are highly conservative in choosing their breeding locations, which explains why San Benedicto has not yet been recolonized. Vagrants of other species,