About 1700 people have turned up at Wellington Zoo to farewell Happy Feet, the emperor penguin who captured the country's heart after being washed up sick and starving on a New Zealand beach 3000km from his Antarctic home.
The penguin is scheduled to be taken aboard a boat that will return him to his natural habitat in the Southern Ocean. The zoo that nursed him back to health laid on a farewell party.
Hundreds of children dressed in black and white went to the zoo on Sunday and signed a giant goodbye card for the bird, which veterinarian Lisa Argilla said cannot wait to go home.
"He wants to leave," she told The Dominion Post Weekend newspaper.
"He is ready and he's really stroppy.
"His personality has changed. He's a lot more feisty. He doesn't like us holding him and manhandling him to give him medication."
The bird, nicknamed Happy Feet after the 2006 animated film of that name, had one last manhandling in front of several hundred onlookers when he was anaesthetised and had a tracking device fitted to feathers on his lower back with super-strength glue.
The device will enable fans to monitor his progress after the fisheries research ship Tangaroa releases him near 53 degrees south, about 630km south of New Zealand, later in the week. Friends can track him on www.sirtrack.com and www.ourfarsouth.org.
Officials said the device, about half the size of a mobile, would fall off the bird when he moults in the Antarctic summer about the end of the year.
Happy Feet was found disoriented and eating sand apparently thinking it was snow, on a beach 65km north of Wellington on June 21.
The first emperor penguin to reach New Zealand in more than 40 years, he underwent surgery to remove an estimated 3kg of sand and driftwood from his stomach.
Zoo officials said the penguin, estimated to be three-and-a-half years old - 18 months short of maturity - is now healthy and able to survive in the ocean.
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