Experts said it may also have rested on an ice floe during its travels and was carried north for a great distance before it made a swim for dry land.
Emperor penguins can swim at up to 15mph. But because it would have had to rest at time and would not have been able to swim at that speed for long, its wayward journey would have taken more than a month. The tallest and largest species of penguins - emperors can grow up to 4ft tall.
Colin Miskelly, a curator of New Zealand Museum, said: 'They can spend months at a time in the ocean and come ashore only to moult or rest.' Some two dozens colonies of the birds are throught to exist in Antarctica, ranging from less than 200 pairs to more than 50,000.
They are the toughest of all the species, the only ones able to reproduce during the Antarctic winter, when temperatures can drop to minus 50c.
Mr Miskelly said the plucky bird would have to find its way back south soon if it was going to survive. He said: 'It is probably hot and thirsty and has been eating wet sand.
'It doesn't realise that the sand isn't going to melt inside it because they typically eat snow - their only liquid.'
New Zealand residents have been warned to give the bird a wide berth - it can inflict painful bites if threatened.
Vagrant emperor penguins have been reported as far apart as the South Shetland Islands, Tierra del Fuego, the Falklands, South Sandwich Islands, Kerguelen Island, Heard Island and New Zealand.
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