The Sikorski Glacier is a small

glacier A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...

in the north-eastern part of the Noville Peninsula,

Thurston Island Thurston Island () is a largely ice-covered, glacially dissected island, long and wide, lying between Amundsen Sea and Bellingshausen Sea a short way off the northwest end of Ellsworth Land, Antarctica. The island is separated from the mainlan ...

Ellsworth Land Ellsworth Land is a portion of the Antarctica, Antarctic continent bounded on the west by Marie Byrd Land, on the north by the Bellingshausen Sea, on the northeast by the base of the Antarctic Peninsula, and on the east by the western margin of t ...

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

. It flows north-east to the

Bellingshausen Sea The Bellingshausen Sea is an area along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula between 57°18'W and 102°20'W, west of Alexander Island, east of Cape Flying Fish on Thurston Island, and south of Peter I Island (there the southern ''Vostokkyste ...

between Mount Palmer and Mount Feury. It was first roughly delineated from aerial photos taken by the USN's

Operation Highjump Operation HIGHJUMP, officially titled The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946–1947, (also called Task Force 68), was a United States Navy (USN) operation to establish the Antarctic research base Little America (exploration b ...

in 1946–47. It was named by the

Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica. History The committee was established ...

(US-ACAN) for Stephen Sikorski, electronics technician on USS ''Glacier'', who assisted in setting up an automatic weather station on Thurston Island during the USN's Bellingshausen Sea Expedition in February 1960.

Important Bird Area

A 316 ha site on

fast ice Fast ice (also called ''land-fast ice'', ''landfast ice'', and ''shore-fast ice'') is sea ice or lake ice that is "fastened" to the coastline, to the sea floor along shoals, or to grounded icebergs.Leppäranta, M. 2011. The Drift of Sea Ice. B ...

north of the glacier has been designated 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 i ...

because it supports a breeding colony of about 3,500

emperor penguin The emperor penguin (''Aptenodytes forsteri'') is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is Endemism in birds, endemic to Antarctica. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching in length and weighing fr ...

s, based on 2009 satellite imagery.

Maps

Thurston Island – Jones Mountains.
1:500000 Antarctica Sketch Map. US Geological Survey, 1967.
Antarctic Digital Database (ADD).
Scale 1:250000 topographic map of Antarctica. Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), 1993–2016.

References

* Important Bird Areas of Antarctica Penguin colonies Glaciers of Thurston Island {{ThurstonIsland-glacier-stub

Important Bird Area

See also

Maps

References