Balearic shearwater Balearic shearwater The Balearic shearwater ("Puffinus mauretanicus") is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family "Procellariidae". "Puffinus" is a New Latin loanword based on the English "puffin" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn and puffing, that referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the Manx shearwater, a former delicacy. The specific "mauretanicus" refers to Mauretania, an old name for an area of North Africa roughly corresponding to Morocco and Algeria. It was long regarded a subspecies of the Manx shearwater (see there for more on the "Puffinus puffinus" superspecies); following an initial split it was held
Persian shearwater off Oman and Socotra, Yemen, while "P. p. temptator" has been estimated to number fewer than 500 pairs on Moheli Island in the Comoros (reviewed by Brooke 2004). It is thought likely that more breeding colonies lie undiscovered elsewhere in the northern Indian Ocean (Onley and Scofield 2007), thus the total population probably includes more than 10,000 mature individuals. The population trend is believed to be downwards. Persian shearwater The Persian shearwater ("Puffinus persicus") is a seabird in the family Procellariidae formerly lumped in with Audubon's shearwater ("Puffinus lherminieri"). There are two listed subspecies of the Persian shearwater: After breeding,