A southern giant petrel rescued from Brophys Beach in high winds earlier this month has departed after a two-week, 1.7kg-fuelled rest at a Kuaotunu ‘recovery nest'.

Kuaotunu bird rescuer Annemieke Kregting watched the petrel sit at a cliff top overlooking Matarangi Beach for one hour and 40 minutes on Saturday before deciding to let the bird be and take off to the southern ocean in his own time.

A southern giant petrel rescued from Brophys Beach earlier this month was released at Matarangi Beach with an extra 1.7kg on his frame on Saturday. Photos: Annemieke Kregting.

'I had the bird for two weeks and released him on Saturday,” says Annemieke, who was called upon by a member of the public on July 10 to rescue the petrel, finding the male juvenile uninjured but underweight at 3kg and very tired.

Since then Annemieke's put the bird up at her place to feed him back to healthy weight of 5kg – a rare occurrence with southern giant petrels fishing of New Zealand waters but not usually coming to land.

She's only rescued one other, and had an albatross dropped off last month after a big storm.

'I can't 100 per cent say how this is happening but after storms I always quite a few calls about birds blown off course and on beaches – and they are quite often large birds.

'They land on the water off course and are too weak to take flight again so get taken in by the tide.”

Kuaotunu bird rescuer Annemieke Kregting releases a southern giant petrel two weeks rescuing it from from Brophys Beach earlier this month.

During the last two weeks her latest feather guest has munched through more than 14kg of chicken livers and hearts, squid, oxheart, pilchards and beef – all bought by Annemieke.

Still he was 300grams underweight, but raring to go – raising his wings all the time and 'grabbing everything in sight”.

'I made contact with Auckland Bird Rescue Centre because he was supposed to weigh 5kg when I released him, but he was so eager to go and so hungry I couldn't keep up feeding him.

'ABDC said because he's a juvenile he'll be ready to go.”

An underweight and tired southern giant petrel jsut after it was rescued from Brophys Beach earlier this month.

With 4.7kg on his frame, Annemieke says the bird was happy to sit on the cliff top so she left, but checked up on him later that afternoon to find him gone.

'From experience I know it can sometimes take up to day for them to take off – it's having enough oxygen in the blood to pump through the wings to have the strength.”

Annemieke says she isn't worried about the food bill her rare friend left behind, saying it shows how hard the birds have to work to generate that amount of grub in the wild.

'It was worthwhile – now I just have to get the stink out of my backyard.”