Black and grey traditional tattoo of a stylised bird with folded wings and a banner reading PRETTY BIRD, on the upper arm.

Pretty Bird banner tattoo on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey traditional-style tattoo shows a stylised bird with wing and feather detail, wrapped by a banner that reads PRETTY BIRD. Bold outlines and grey shading give the piece a solid, dimensional look against the skin. A partial coloured tattoo is visible at the left edge, and white fabric fills the right side of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook on the barque Mercy Vane kept a grey parrot in a cage beside the galley range, and the bird had learnt one thing from the crew before it ever saw the sea. When the bread scorched, it would cry out pretty bird in the voice of the bosun's wife, and the lads would laugh and forgive it the coal dust.

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Nobody aboard knew where it came from. Old Hannah Dorne, who scrubbed the pots and had served under three captains, said a Portuguese trader had swapped it for a barrel of salt beef off Madeira, and that the bird could count the stars but would never tell you the number.

In the second week of the calm, the water casks turned green and the ship drifted with her sails hanging like wet washing. The captain's boy went down with fever, and there was no tea to be had. Then the parrot began to call out the bearings the captain had shouted the morning they nearly struck the reef, every figure of them, until the captain came down the ladder in his shirtsleeves to hear it.

He stood a long while in the smoke. Then he asked the cook where a bird could have learnt such a thing. Hannah answered for him, without looking up from her pots: from the wheel, sir, you taught it yourself, shouting at the wind. The captain went back on deck. Next morning the parrot was out on the rail, turning its head toward the empty sea, saying pretty bird to nobody at all.

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