Foulness Island of plants and invertebrates thrive there. Other birds which use the island for breeding include avocet, common tern, little tern, Sandwich tern and ringed plover. During the winter months, in excess of 100,000 waterfowl have been reported. The avocet population is the second largest in the United Kingdom. The Foulness SSSI has been designated as a Special Protection Area for Birds under the EC Birds Directive, and is also a Ramsar site under the Ramsar Convention because of its importance as a wetland. Foulness Island Foulness Island () is an island on the east coast of Essex in England, which
Island of the Jewel broadly. The four chorographic maps of the 1037 manuscript of al-Khwārizmī—including that of the Island of the Jewel—are the oldest surviving maps from the Islamic world. Al-Khwārizmī gave the Island of the Jewel as the easternmost point of the inhabited world. His gazetteer is divided by categories but altogether he provides coordinates for its coast, three cities, its surrounding chain of mountains, and two summits on the interior. It lies in the Sea of Darkness near the equator, east of his equivalent of Ptolemy's Golden Peninsula (Malaysia) and east of the still larger phantom peninsula—now usually known as the Dragon's