Taboo birds of the sea

While reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" I noticed that there were some questions on why the Mariner was being punished so for killing the albatross. I decided to clear some of the confusion on this area. First off, to sailors there are two birds which are considered to be the greatest good luck. They are the dove and the albatross. It is easy enough to see why both of these birds are seen as good luck to sailors. The dove is seen as good luck thanks to the supernatural nature of the sailors and the fact that it was a dove that brought Noah the olive branch that signaled land after god's seven day flood. This symbol within the bible would obviously lead sailors to assume that the dove is a symbol of good fortune since the greatest fortune for a sailor was arriving at the island they were sailing to. The albatross became famous for virtually the same reason except this story’s origins have more of a scientific background. The albatross is a sea bird meaning that it is naturally able to fly much further out to sea than many other types of birds. Birds are able to fly across the sea but most bird only do this during a migration season while the albatross can be found out at sea all year long. Also while it is able to fly fairly far out to sea it has somewhat of a natural boundary from an island or land mass. Because of this the albatross was the first bird that sailors saw and land was soon after a sighting of this bird. It is from these backgrounds that the myths about the dove and albatross were born. The myths state that while the birds remained free and unharmed a fair and plentiful land will always await those who follow it. However those foolish enough to endanger either of these birds would be met with the full ferocity of the sea. Obviously we saw how ferocious the sea can be when the Mariner killed the albatross.