The Royal Albatross Centre yesterday said Department of Conservation rangers spotted a bird known as OL (Orange/Lime) on the headland on Tuesday.
OL had not been seen for seven months as the birds have been circumnavigating the southern end of the planet, a celebratory statement from the centre said.
To honour the arrival, bells rang across Dunedin at 1pm yesterday.
Doc ranger Sharyn Broni said OL was a 12-year-old female who was seen spending time with a potential mate last summer.
Time would tell if she laid an egg in November, she said.
Otago Peninsula Trust ecotourism manager Hoani Langsbury said between 35 to 50 breeding pairs were expected to fledge more than two dozen chicks as the Dunedin colony continued to grow.
Around 150 to 170 adult birds spent the summer in the colony, but not all were breeders, Mr Langsbury said.
Some birds that would return this year were first-time returners that would not have visited the place they fledged from, or any land, for five or six years.
Birds could get to 10 or 11 years old before they started breeding.
But whatever their age, birds often appeared shaky on their legs when they first returned because they had not had to support their own body weight for such a long stretch.
Last year, the first bird of the breeding season returned to Dunedin a week earlier, but Mr Langsbury said the colony had had chicks fledging for the last week or two and typically breeding birds would begin arriving before the last chick fledged.
At present 16 out of last season’s 25 chicks had yet to fledge.
With the population centre of the species in the Chatham Islands, where 17,000 to 23,000 birds lived, the birds remained very rare on the mainland where around 250 birds lived, he said.
