Black Albatross in dreams
A long-distance ocean bird — a burden you carry, and the long journey it implies.
How black changes the reading
Black colour pulls the symbol toward the not-yet-known — depth, hiddenness, the part of the situation that has not yet come into the light. The dream is rarely warning you; it is showing you that there is more to the picture than the part you have been looking at.
The base reading of Albatross
An albatross in a dream is two old images at once. It is the long-haul traveller who can stay aloft for weeks without landing, and — through Coleridge — the weight a person earns by harming what should not have been harmed. The dream brings the bird when something you did, or failed to do, is now travelling with you for a long way. An albatross flying freely is the dream telling you the burden can be released. An albatross hung around the neck is the dream naming a guilt you have not yet found a way to set down.