Black and grey realism tattoo of a feather breaking up into a flock of birds on the upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Feather dissolving into birds on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A feather is shown on the upper back, its lower half drawn with dark, detailed shading and its upper half breaking apart into a cluster of small birds. Several more birds fly off towards the right shoulder, and the soft grey tones fade into the skin. The photograph is taken from behind, with the subject's head and shoulder partly visible and a plain pink top at the bottom of the frame.

Realism Back Feather Bird Flock Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's loose, my father never fixed it and I'm not starting at my age. Sit where you can see the harbour wall. That's it. Now, you'll want to know about the gulls, because everyone asks about the gulls off Skerry Pier, and the answer is they were never gulls to begin with.

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Eighty years back there was a boat called the Margaret Kell, crewed by four brothers from Cullen and one lad from Lerwick who couldn't tie a knot to save his life. Their skipper, Tam Irvine, had a wife who knitted socks for every man in the fleet. On the last trip before the big blow, the lad, Davie, found a grey feather caught in the net, long as a man's forearm, and he kept it tucked inside his oilskin for luck.

The storm came in from the north-west at four in the afternoon. They hauled the nets in the dark with the sea white all round them. When the Margaret Kell limped back two days later, Davie was not aboard. His oilskin lay folded on the thwart with the feather still inside it. Tam swore that as they came round the point, a flock lifted off the water and wheeled once above the mast, then broke apart over the bay like sparks off a fire, half of them dark, half of them pale as salt.

So the gulls come in threes and fours to meet the boats now, and if one drops a feather on your coat, you don't sweep it off. You put it in your pocket and keep hold of it until the harbour lights show. That's how Davie came home, and it's how the rest of us manage it too.