See text Puffinus is a genus of seabirds in the order Procellariiformes that contains about 20 small to medium-sized shearwaters.

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.

However, more recent results[3][4][5] have determined that the genus is apparently paraphyletic and while in part very close to Calonectris, forms a clade with the genera Pseudobulweria and Lugensa, which were formerly presumed to be gadfly petrels, and can be divided in what has been called the "Puffinus" and the "Neonectris" group after notable species; the latter has been separated as a distinct genus named Ardenna.

[8] "Puffin" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn and puffing,[9] referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the shearwater, a former delicacy.

[10] The original usage dates from at least 1337, but from as early as 1678 the term gradually came to be used for another, unrelated, seabird, the Atlantic puffin, an auk.