The white-capped albatross, spotted with a blue paint mark on its head, featured in an Otago Daily Times report on January 27.
As expected, the bird was marked as part of conservation research, carried out by Dunedin-based researcher Graham Parker and his wife Kalinka Rexer-Huber in the Auckland Islands, 500km south of Bluff, in January.
An ODT reader contacted the Department of Conservation seeking an explanation after reading the story and, when the couple returned to Dunedin late last month, they received a phone call from Doc asking if they were behind the mystery.
Mr Parker said the couple had been in the Auckland Islands for three months studying seabird species caught as by-catch in commercial fisheries in New Zealand.
The featured bird was marked on Disappointment Island between January 13 and 15, Mr Parker said.
‘‘The blue spot . . . was a stock marker, the same as is used on sheep and cattle.''
It was used to ensure a bird was not approached or recaptured after it had already been handled, he said.
A metal leg band was also attached to the bird and would remain there as part of a study into species survival rates.
Mr Parker said that the islands were some of the most pristine in New Zealand and much of the wildlife that bred there spent time on the Otago coast.
‘‘Essentially, Otago is in the ‘ecological neighbourhood' of these islands so they are important to us here, despite being amazingly unknown in Dunedin,'' he said.
