n.
Any of numerous species (family Procellariidae) of long-winged seabirds named for their habit of gliding on stiff wings along wave troughs.
Typical shearwaters are the 1217 drab, slender-billed species of Puffinus , 1426 in. (3565 cm) long. Shearwaters nest in a burrow on offshore islands and coastal hills in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and throughout most of the Pacific. A colony may consist of hundreds of thousands of pairs; at night, when the calling adults move in and out of the burrows, the din is deafening. See also fulmar , petrel .