The remarkable truth about the Dodo,

a juvenal story..

Now that we are well into the twenty-first century, it is time to shake off one of the old myths of the past that have plagued mankind for far too long.
I'm really sorry for all those scholars who have built vast theories on the few real facts about this alleged extinct bird and thus contributed to the unstable house of cards that the stories have become. It had to collapse one day, and now that day has come, just in time, so to speak, because now the chances of mankind getting extinct themselves have been calculated at fifty percent, going the way of the Dodo without a clue about this metaphor.
I'm not a scientist, not even an ornithologist, but perhaps it's for the best that I'm an outsider; isn't it customary for outsiders to be called in to deliver the bad news? But before I tell the little story of how I came to see this simple truth so obviously and clearly,
let's lift the veil;

The Dodo never existed; this sentence should stand alone in bold capitals, but I'd like the readers to follow me from the start, it is after all, a story.
Despite not being an ornithologist, there's one fact about me that may make me best suited to bring this: I am Dutch! Wasn't it a group of Dutch sailors who discovered a bird on Mauritius in the first place? They were certainly not scholars, but even if they had been, they may not have interpreted correctly what they really saw. And what did they see? Here it is, drum roll: the chick of an albatross, a juvenile. The big fat chick of (most likely) a Northern Royal Albatross that was sitting rather drowsily on its nest, waiting to be fed by both its parent albatrosses who are fishing at sea.
Now that's an albatross: an oppressive and inescapable fact! How peculiar, I found this
alternative meaning in my online Chambers dictionary.

Now, if you've never seen a young albatross grow into this huge, mighty bird that rules the seas, you might actually mistake it for an unknown bird at first.
After hatching, it is guarded by one of its parents for about 40 days,after which it is left alone and fed only during brief encounters with a parent bird. During this period, the young bird grows fatter and larger. They are fed at night, very hastily. Chick hatch in late January. They fledge in late September. Calculate with me; remember, 40 days of care, let's say until the end of February, give or take a few days. That leaves about seven months in which the chick (only one at a time; breeding takes place in alternate years) grows up mostly unattended.
In the final stage, and this goes very quickly, the gray, fluffy feathers disappear to make way for the feathers that will enable the albatross to fly and give it its final cover.

In the final stage, they appear as adults on a nest. But then they suddenly rule the sky, for a year without touching land. An amazing wonder. The chick or youngster is huge and only in the final stage does it unfold its wings, shake out its old feathers and flies!
The appearance of this young bird bears a remarkable resemblance to the description of the Dodo spotting in the sixteenth century, from its overall gray appearance, its numbness and shape of its beak up to the little tuft of feathers on the back of its body. Also its behavior of clapping with its beak, obviously to to throw up their catch, is also striking in the accounts of Mauritius by our fellow Dutchmen. They are known to clap their beaks when you come near them, in anticipation of being fed. That's what the original source told us… Even the silly theories about the 'thin' and the 'fat' Dodo are easily debunked, they simply saw an older bird the second time they came around. The Dutch called the bird 'Walghvogel', can be translated as a bird (= vogel) horrible (to taste). You may be reluctant to put this to the test, but doesn't the pudgy flesh of a hatchling usually taste bad?

You may not be convinced at first, but it just all fits in, the Dutch sailors only used Mauritius for brief stops on their way to the East Indies and so they never had the opportunity or interest to observe this bird for long periods. Despite the bad taste, they probably ate most of them. (I know, I’m Dutch..) The drawings they made were unprofessional, the stories unscientific and when the last 'Dodo's' were finally gone the albatrosses never returned and the myths began, and have been continued for over 400 years now. Exhibitions and books about the Dodo, lacking facts, are mostly about the role the Dodo has played in the human imagination over the centuries.

This is how I discovered it: I was watching a television program aired on the National Geographic Channel.
It was about the efforts taken in New Zealand at Taiarao Head (Pukekura to Maori) by the
WestpacTrust Royal Albatross Center to preserve this bird of grace and mystery. At one point in the documentary, a woman was carrying the chick around. Having seen the dodo drawings before (the original source is in “The Archives”, The Hague, Holland)
I was thinking, hey, they're carrying around a Dodo, but wait a moment...
Later I was convinced, I did a little research and tried to separate the few known facts about the Mauritius encounter from the enormous amount of nonsense derived from it. I'm really sorry, but it's their own fault. I mean, to build such huge theories on so little evidence, let's rewrite history.

I wrote to New Zealand, and for sure I got the postcards, my best candidate became the Northern variant of the Royal Albatross, when I saw a map showing its habitat, I myself was sure, it just touches upon a few tiny specks east of Madagascar, grab another map: Reunion, Mauricio and Rodriguez!
Now this was already some time ago and I never made the effort to publish this story, which is really easy with the advent of the Internet: just put it on your homepage. But after it had lingered in my mind for some time now, I became increasingly irritated with every reference to the Dodo. Stories were being told about stories that made no sense to me.
So here it is, correctly posted on the Internet on 11/27/2024. The chicks at Dunedin, New Zealand looked very much like Dodo's around late September, but beware, visits to the area are strictly controlled, because one thing must be avoided at all costs: that the Royal Albatross may ever go extinct, but not like the Dodo.

Don't be a dodo.

Rowan
“down under”, 11/27/2024 (very early)

Enjoy!