A North Otago man came across the dead albatross while out for a walk on the beach.
The Department of Conservation (Doc) was aware of the find and was handling the incident, senior Doc biodiversity ranger Richard Seed said.
"A ranger has collected and frozen the bird and it will be taken to Dunedin later this week.
"Staff with knowledge of the different types of albatross think it is likely to be a wandering albatross, based off pictures they have seen."
He said this kind of thing did not happen often.
"While it is not common for albatross to wash up, it does happen from time to time.
"We do not know what the cause of death is in this instance."
The wandering albatross is similar in size to the southern royal albatross.
It is one of the largest, best-known and most-studied species of bird in the world.
It has the greatest known wingspan of any living bird — up to 3.5m — and is also one of the most far-ranging birds. Some individual wandering albatrosses are known to circumnavigate the Southern Ocean three times, covering more than 120,000km in one year.
Doc wanted to thank the man who reported the dead albatross and urged anyone who found something similar to do the same, Mr Seed said.
Doc would investigate the cause of death of the bird for official records over the next couple of weeks.
