He's healthy, well-fed and far from home. And he's quickly become the most popular attraction on a New Zealand beach. If only he could talk.

A young penguin apparently took a wrong turn while swimming near Antarctica and endured a 2000-mile (3200-kilometre) journey to New Zealand, the first time in 44 years that one of the creatures has been sighted here in the wild.

Christine Wilton was walking her dog on Monday when she discovered the black-and-white bird.

"It was out-of-this-world to see it," she said. "Like someone just dropped it from the sky."