Black heraldic eagle tattoo with a red beak, red talons and a red and white shield on its chest, in a traditional style across a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heraldic eagle with shield on upper back

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large heraldic eagle with spread black wings, a red beak and red talons stands over a red and white shield on the chest, with scrolled black foliage below. The eagle is solid black with fine grey highlights along the feathers, while the shield and talons provide the only colour. The design fills the shoulder blade area and is shot straight on against bare skin.

Traditional Back Eagle Shield Talon Beak Feather Scrollwork

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold the lamp closer, Tomas, the frost has got back onto the glass and I'll not tell this one twice. You want to know why old Lehner's gate has a black bird nailed above it? Then sit where I can see your face and stop fidgeting with that poker.

Keep reading

The eagle came down off the ridge in the winter the river froze to its bed. It had a red beak like a split cherry, and it had taken three of the Ostermann ewes before anyone thought to look up. The farmer, the boy's great-grandfather, went out with a shotgun in one hand and his dead father's painted shield in the other, the red and white gone soft with age. The bird came down onto that shield and would not let go, talons hooked through the boards, and the two of them stood in the snow until the sun cleared the pines.

He did not fire. He said afterwards the bird had only been looking for something solid to hold on to, same as him. So he carried it down to the barn, fed it the last of the bacon, and the shield became its perch all winter. The ewes stopped dying. In spring it lifted off over the ridge and left three black feathers on the threshing floor, grey at the edges where the light caught them.

Every year since, a Lehner has scraped the frost off that gate with the edge of the shield, and nobody has ever hung it straight. Go on, touch the feathers if you like. They're warmer than you'd think, and they never did belong to an ordinary bird.