Seabird sea and breeding in isolated colonies. However, some seabirds, particularly, the albatrosses and gulls, have broken into popular consciousness. The albatrosses have been described as "the most legendary of birds", and have a variety of myths and legends associated with them, and today it is widely considered unlucky to harm them, although the notion that sailors believed that is a myth that derives from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", in which a sailor is punished for killing an albatross by having to wear its corpse around his neck. "Instead of the Cross the Albatross"
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem. The mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south by a storm