Dunøyane is a group of islands north of

Hornsund Hornsund is a fjord on the western side of the southernmost tip of northern Norway's Spitsbergen island. The fjord's mouth faces west to the Greenland Sea, and is wide. The length is , the mean depth is , and the maximal depth is . Hornsund cut ...

, outside

Wedel Jarlsberg Land Wedel Jarlsberg Land is the land area between Van Keulenfjorden and Hornsund on the southwestern part of Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The area is largely covered with glaciers, and is completely within the Sør-Spitsbergen National Park Sør-Spi ...

at the western coast of

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

. The island group is a

nest A nest is a structure built for certain animals to hold Egg (biology), eggs or young. Although nests are most closely associated with birds, members of all classes of vertebrates and some invertebrates construct nests. They may be composed of ...

ing site for

barnacle goose The barnacle goose (''Branta leucopsis'') is a species of goose that belongs to the genus ''Branta'' of black geese, which contains species with extensive black in the plumage, distinguishing them from the grey ''Anser (genus), Anser'' species. D ...

common eider The common eider (pronounced ) (''Somateria mollissima''), also called St. Cuthbert's duck or Cuddy's duck, is a large ( in body length) sea-duck that is distributed over the northern coasts of Europe, North America and eastern Siberia. It breed ...

and

Arctic tern The Arctic tern (''Sterna paradisaea'') is a tern in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Europe (as far south as Brittany), Asia, and North America (as far south ...

. Hunters used to collect eiderdown at the islands. Dunøyane are included in the

Dunøyane Bird Sanctuary Dunøyane Bird Sanctuary () is a bird reserve in Svalbard, Norway, established in 1973. It includes islands west of Dunøysundet in Wedel Jarlsberg Land. The protected area covers a total of around 11.9 km2. The island group of Dunøyane is a ...

, and part of the

Sør-Spitsbergen National Park Sør-Spitsbergen National Park (, ) encompasses the southern end of Spitsbergen island in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. The park was opened in 1973 and includes Wedel Jarlsberg Land, Torell Land and Sørkapp Land. Over 65% of the region i ...

References

Islands of Svalbard Ramsar sites in Norway {{svalbard-geo-stub