Heywood Island is the largest of the islands off the north coast of

Robert Island Robert Island or Mitchells Island or Polotsk Island or Roberts Island is an island long and wide, situated between Nelson Island and Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. Robert Island is located at . Surface area . T ...

in the

South Shetland Islands The South Shetland Islands are a group of Antarctic islands with a total area of . They lie about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and between southwest of the nearest point of the South Orkney Islands. By the Antarctic Treaty of 195 ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. It is named after Captain Peter Heywood, RN (1773–1831), commanding HMS ''Nereus'' off the east coast of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

in 1810–13, formerly a

midshipman A midshipman is an officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Canada (Naval Cadet), Australia, Bangladesh, Namibia, New Zealand, South Afr ...

in ''

HMS Bounty HMS ''Bounty'', also known as HM Armed Vessel ''Bounty'', was a small merchant vessel that the Royal Navy purchased in 1787 for a botanical mission. The ship was sent to the South Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire ...

'' under Captain

William Bligh Vice-Admiral William Bligh (9 September 1754 – 7 December 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. The mutiny on the HMS ''Bounty'' occurred in 1789 when the ship was under his command; after being set adrift i ...

. The area was visited by early 19th century

sealers Sealer may refer either to a person or ship engaged in seal hunting, or to a sealant; associated terms include: Seal hunting * Sealer Hill, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica * Sealers' Oven, bread oven of mud and stone built by sealers around 180 ...

operating from nearby

Clothier Harbour Clothier Harbour is the 1.5 km wide bay indenting for 1 km the north coast of Robert Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica between Hammer Point on the northeast and Onogur Islands on the southwest. The harbour was used as a ...

Description

The island lies west by north of

Catharina Point Catharina Point, also ''Varoli Point'', is a rocky point projecting 1.5 km northwards into Drake Passage to form the north extremity of Robert Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica and the northeast side of the entrance to Nevesti ...

, Robert Island; north-west of Hammer Point, Robert Island; north-north-east of

Rogozen Island Rogozen Island ( bg, остров Рогозен, ostrov Rogozen, ) is a conspicuous island off the northwest coast of Robert Island, South Shetland Islands situated north-northeast of Cornwall Island, south-southwest of Heywood Island, and ...

; north-north-east of Fort William, Robert Island; and east-north-east of

Table Island Table Island is an uninhabited island within the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut. It lies in Norwegian Bay, north of Devon Island, and is also south Cornwall Island, separated by Belcher Channel. Ekins Island is a small islet ab ...

(British mapping in 1822, 1935, 1962, and 1968, American in 1942, Argentine in 1946 and 1957, Chilean in 1957 and 1971, and Bulgarian in 2009). It is long with a surface area of .L.L. Ivanov
Antarctica: Livingston Island and Greenwich, Robert, Snow and Smith Islands.
Scale 1:120000 topographic map. Troyan: Manfred Wörner Foundation, 2009. It is ice-free, low, and horseshoe-shaped, its west coast indented for 1 km by Vrabcha Cove.

Important Bird Area

Heywood Island has been identified as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

, because it supports one of the largest chinstrap penguin

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

on the

Antarctic Peninsula The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martín in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctic ...

with around 90,000 pairs.

References

External links

SCAR Composite Antarctic Gazetteer
Livingston-Island-Map-2010

Islands of Robert Island Important Bird Areas of Antarctica Penguin colonies {{RobertIsland-geo-stub

Description

Important Bird Area

See also

References

External links