Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a bird with a fish-like head and clawed feet on a calf, with hatched and dotted shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fish-headed bird on a calf

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A bird with a fish-like head, open beak and clawed feet stands on the outside of a lower leg, facing left. The linework is bold black outline with fine hatching across the wings and body, and stippled dots add shading on the chest and back. The image is a black and grey photograph with a plain light background, and a white sock and a partial dark tattoo are visible at the edges.

Blackwork Dotwork Calf Bird Fish Claw Beak Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down on that upturned creel and mind the tar on the step, because this is a tale about a bird that had no business being a bird. The spring my grandfather was a boy, there stood a thing on the Skerrow mole with a gull's wings folded tight and the head of a herring, its mouth always open as if it had been saving up something to say. It stood on two long clawed feet and never once blinked at the gulls that wheeled round it.

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The fleet paid it no mind, all except Abel Crake, skipper of the Constance, who reckoned birds on the harbour wall were bad luck and kicked at the stones beside it every morning. The bird didn't flinch. It only turned its head westward, slow as a weathercock, and held that stare on the horizon like a man reading a letter he already knows by heart.

One evening in late April it opened its beak wider than any bird should and let out a sound like a bell rope running through a block. Young Tom Crake, Abel's own lad, dropped his oilskins and begged his father not to sail. Abel laughed, the way men laugh when they have already spent the money, and the Constance went out on the ebb with the rest of the boats.

The glass fell by midnight and the sea came up white at the bar. Abel brought her round in the dark, guided by nothing but the thin cry from the mole, and the boats that didn't listen never came home. Next morning the bird was back on the stones with a crab in its claws. Abel set a herring down beside it, and the bird took the fish in its own mouth, which was the only fair trade anyone ever made with it.