Found: Peter the Publicity-shy Penguin

An African penguin which vanished four years ago after becoming a wildlife celebrity for surviving an oil spill has been found on Robben Island.

Peter, the bird world's equivalent of Lord Lucan, was spotted on rocks on Nelson Mandela's former island jail off the coast of Cape Town, it emerged yesterday.

Peter Barham, a British scientist, discovered his namesake while doing environmental research on the island and confirmed the identification by the number on a metal band attached to his flipper.

The penguin became famous after he was rescued from an oil spill in June 2000, tagged with a satellite tracking device and released into the sea.

His 500-mile swim from Port Elizabeth back to his nesting ground on Robben Island was monitored and his arrival home feted as a triumph of environmental conservation and protection.

Ornithologists who followed the journey through the internet with daily updates and coordinates were relieved when he survived great white sharks and stormy seas.

But plans for a publicity stunt homecoming party were abandoned after Peter merged into the penguin population, disappointing those who who would have won first prize for finding him on "welcome home penguins" day.

"Peter has been very clever at keeping undercover. They thought they would never see him again," Natalie Pritchard, of environmental group Earthwatch, told the BBC.

The sighting completes the happy sequel to the story of a cargo ship which sank off Cape Town and leaked 1,400 tonnes of oil, the worst ever slick on South Africa's Atlantic coast, which threatened 40,000 penguins on Robben and Dassen Islands.

In one of the biggest rescue operations of its kind, 28,000 conservationists, soldiers and municipal workers mobilised to help.

Volunteers arrived from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and there were appeals for donations of fish

They cleaned and rehabilitated more than 21,000 oiled birds, almost all of which were released back into the sea. Some 1,000 birds are thought to have died.

Peter, one of three penguins to be fitted with small satellite transmitters on their backs, was the first home.

But it was not clear if he would find a mate or settle into a disrupted colony with new neighbours. His co-swimmers Pamela and Percy also made it home.

Mr Barham has not reported sighting a mate or chicks in the vicinity of Peter. In the absence of Mr Mandela, he is probably Robben Island's most famous resident.