If you'd like to read the story so the writer is compensated, his ebooks seem to be the primary method. The story is found in both Things Will Never Be the Same [Kindle or Weightless] and Howard Who? [Kindle or Weightless].
Summary:
Analysis (spoilers):
Lindberl eventually tracks down where the species was supposed to be as well the family that was said to have had them. As had happened in Europe, one species of dodos had happened to be passed on in the family as one might keep chickens. They eventually died out.
The strangeness of the story is indirectly mapped out everywhere. Note that it won a fantasy award, yet it appeared in every year's best science fiction anthology of the year. Only one editor really discusses the merits of the story itself.
Piggybacking on the weirdness of the award and the anthologies it appeared in, I'll include this circuitous gem from Wollheim and Saha's introduction:
"Science fiction is subject to many definitions and there are some that are so specific that they might exclude this unusual story. But if science fiction deals with the probable that is just beyond the newspapers of with things that might have happened--even thought they did not shake the world--then this is truly science fiction. Further, it's zoological science fiction--and you almost never get any of that!"
Note how nicely they point out that some readers won't think this is SF, but the editors do, so they're including it in this anthology.
Gardner Dozois really only discusses Waldrop the writer with insight:
"called 'the resident Weird Mind of his generation...' he has one of the most individual and quirky voices (and visions) in letters today. Nobody but Howard could possibly have written one of Howard's stories; in most cases, nobody but Howard could possibly have even thought of them. Nor is any one Waldrop story ever much like any previous Waldrop story, and that respect (as well as in the panache and pungency of the writing, the sweep of imagination, and the depth of offbeat erudition), he resembles those other two great uniques, R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson.... [Waldrop] remains underappreciated."
Probably that last statement is more true today with most of his books out of print. Terry Carr makes the best case for this particular story:
"Ornithology isn't one of the usual sciences employed in science fiction, but it's certainly a legitimate one. In any case, Howard Waldrop's stories are seldom of the usual kind, and during the past half-dozen years sf readers have come to expect the unexpected from him... such as in this fascinating, funny and poignant tale."
One suspects that Carr, by reprinting the story immediately after having just printed it the first time, had a hand in bringing this story to readers' and critics' attention. The reprint book has the subtitle, "Science Fiction Stories About the Future of Planet Earth," which doesn't really fit Waldrop's story until you realize it's the Sierra Book Club. If you extrapolate Waldrop's story, then it becomes relevant, but some stretching's involved.
Incidentally, Carr reprinted two stories in the Sierra book from the same year the originals were published. The second was Larry Niven's "The Green Maurader." Dozois republished both. That the Sierra Book Club agreed to the anthology and that Dozois collected both suggests that this may have been a hot topic in 1980. So that might be another reason that "The Ugly Chickens" garnered so much attention.
Once, in a private discussion with another classmate and myself, Waldrop mentioned that a New Yorker editor said he/she would have published it, which no doubt whipped up a mélange of emotions: thrill, disappointment, and doubt. He expressed the doubt. But it does have a very contemporary focus. The speculative wonder is subdued, pointed more at a scientific discovery than something rich and strange. I could see it in The New Yorker, although some passages may require the standard SF reader (although those literary readers who are willing to read lengthy passages about whales in Melville's Moby Dick, might well put up with Lindberl's historical passages about the dodo.
So what the story had going for it: 1) realism, (semi-realistic portrayal of graduate student), 2) pursuit of an almost mythic if absurd creature, thought lost to time long before, 3) zeitgeist, 4) unusual science/subject matter, and 5) Howard Waldrop's oeuvre up to that point. Both Carr and Dozois allude to this--that Waldrop had been getting attention for his work.
Besides the above, what are the story's strengths?
One is simply Waldrop's moment-to-moment charm:
Then she began to smile.
“Oh, you mean the ugly chickens?” she said.
I smiled. I almost laughed. I knew what Oedipus must have gone through.
A weird allusion, to be sure, but it describes a sudden attraction toward an older woman, so that we feel a warmth toward both. How many writers have you seen characterized via an allusion--Oedipus, no less.
The opening is another strength. How exciting to find out that a stranger on a bus has seen a supposedly long extinct species:
What I should have said was: “That is quite impossible, madam. This is a drawing of an extinct bird of the island of Mauritius. It is perhaps the most famous dead bird in the world. Maybe you are mistaking this drawing for that of some rare Asiatic turkey, peafowl, or pheasant. I am sorry, but you are mistaken.”
I should have said all that.
What she said was, “Oops, this is my stop,” and got up to go....
I have several vices and follies, but I don’t think foolishness is one of them.
The stupid thing for me to do would have been to follow her.
She stepped off the bus.
I followed her.
Lindberl doesn't make a good case for his not following her. While the dodo species remains extinct, he remains excited about the discovery despite learning that the loss is still permanent. Perhaps emotionally it would be foolish/stupid. Another possibility exists, which I'll discuss later.
"Lindberl" is a cool name to choose. Apparently, no one in the history of the internet has chosen to name anyone with the same name. A search only turned up mentions of Waldrop's story. The name's almost "Lindbergh," which we are supposed to think of; in fact, someone calls him by that name. Readers, then, are supposed to associate our narrator with the man who first flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean--an appropriate association since we are dealing with birds (although dodos are flightless, so are humans without some intervention). Lindergh was also the first to accomplish a thing, so too will Lindberl.
Much of the story is devoted to the history of the dodo. It's doom seems inevitable, yet Waldrop makes us feel a tender, sadness at their loss, nonetheless.
There are a few issues that seem like authorial errors. For instance, Lindberl collecting evidence in a sack, as opposed to doing a careful excavation. Likely there would be a lot of evidence destroyed by humans. Still, in trying to suss out on how the dodos behaved, surely they'd want to look at where the evidence was found.
Also, it ends with his hope about getting into Scientific American. One would think his concern would be getting into a professional journal. Scientific American is for lay readers.
It took me awhile to put this together, but maybe Lindberl prefers Scientific American to an academic journal. Maybe his goal isn't academia at all but a launchpad for, say, popular scientific writing (nothing indicates this in the text, though). Or maybe he's kind of a goofball, half-cocked grad student. Maybe that's why he felt foolish and stupid above. Maybe he's so eager to find out about the dodo that he's rushed into this, unprepared. Maybe that explains the mention of his professor reading Nature. Not that whatever he's done would ruin his chances for getting into a good academic journal and Scientific American or wind up with a good study, but his rush into this might have been prevented with a discussion with his advising professor. I'm not sure how he talked his way into getting money from the department. Perhaps they had a slush fund for whatever purpose. I would suspect there would have to be some sort of application process.
Other Quotes:
The following excerpt seems to be a self-allusion, perhaps to his future work, Them Bones:
Or [the dodos] could have been brought centuries before by the Arabs who plied the Indian Ocean in their triangular-sailed craft, and who may have discovered the Mascarenes before the Europeans cranked themselves up for the First Crusade.
This passage, describing the narrator, seems to mirror humanity's own historical behavior toward animals:
"At one time early in my bird-fascination days (after I stopped killing them with BB guns but before I began to work for a scholarship)"
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