Manx Shearwater

ocean birds · seabirds · Atlantic Ocean · fast fliers

Ocean speed demon. Manx shearwaters are medium-sized seabirds that zoom low over the water with amazing speed and agility, using their long wings to glide and skim across the waves.

Confusing old name. In the 1600s, people called these birds Manks puffins because of a strange reason: puffin was an old word for the cured meat of young shearwaters that people ate.

Named after an island. The bird is called a Manx shearwater because many of them lived and nested near the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, and shearwater refers to how they shear (cut) across the water's surface.

Puffin mix-up. The Atlantic puffin got its name later, possibly because it nests in similar burrows and rocky areas as the shearwaters, which confused the two bird families together.