Balearic Shearwater

About the Balearic Shearwater

The Balearic shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus) is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. Puffinus is a Neo-Latin loanword based on the English "puffin" and its variants, 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. The Balearic Shearwater is listed critically endangered by the IUCN and is one of Europe's most endangered seabirds.

The Balearic shearwater was formally described in 1921 by the English ornithologist Percy Lowe. He treated it as a subspecies of the Manx shearwater and coined the trinomial name Puffinus puffinus mauretanicus. The Balearic shearwater was long regarded a subspecies of the Manx shearwater. Following an initial split, it was held to be a subspecies of the "Mediterranean shearwater" for nearly ten more years, until it was resolved to be a distinct species, separate from the yelkouan shearwater.

A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2021 found very little genetic difference between the Balearic shearwater and the yelkouan shearwater... Wikipedia →