A lost penguin has been found more than 1,800 miles from home, having initially been mistaken for a soft toy.
The Adélie penguin, named Pingu by locals, incredibly made it all the way from Antarctica to the coast of New Zealand, where he was discovered by an anxious couple.
Pingu was underweight and dehydrated, forcing medics to fit him with a feeding tube.
Harry Singh, who spotted the penguin on the beach at Birdlings Flat, to the south of Christchurch, said he initially thought he was a soft toy - and he did not move for an hour.
Mr Singh told the BBC : "First I thought it (was) a soft toy, suddenly the penguin moved his head , so I realised it was real."
He was walking with his wife when he spotted Pingu, and worried that he might become a target for other animals after his long journey.
He said: "We did not want it to end up in a dog's or cat's stomach."
Mr Singh put in calls to penguin experts, who were baffled to discover Pingu was so far from his natural habitat.
After being nursed back to full health, it is expected that Pingu will be released onto a nearby beach, where there are no dogs allowed.
It is only the third time that an Adélie penguin has been found in New Zealand, with previous occasions dating back to 1993 and 1962.
Experts will be carrying out work to find out if the latest instance is the result of a worrying change in the oceans.
Otago University zoology professor Philip Seddon told The Guardian : “All species of penguin are like marine sentinels … when they’re doing badly, they’re giving us an early signal – canaries in coalmines – an early signal that things are not good."
He continued: "I think if we started getting annual arrivals of Adélie penguins, we'd go actually, something's changed in the ocean that we need to understand.
"More studies will give us more understanding where penguins go, what they do, what the population trends are like - they're going to tell us something about the health of that marine ecosystem in general."
