Black and grey tattoo of a songbird formed from a treble clef and musical notes on the ribs, with staff lines sweeping out like wings.

Songbird made of music notes and treble clef

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A songbird is built from a treble clef and flowing musical notes, with staff lines fanning out behind it like wings. The linework is bold and dark, with soft grey shading on the bird's head and body that gives it some depth. The design sits on pale skin, with the notes drifting off to the right and the lower clef and dynamic marks sweeping down at the bottom of the frame.

Ribs Bird Treble clef Music note Musical staff

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The bird came aboard somewhere off the Azores, a small grey thing blown out past the islands with nothing to land on but our rigging. Cook reckoned it would be dead by morning. It wasn't. It hopped along the yard for two days picking at biscuit crumbs, and on the third night the wind got up and the whole ship went quiet except for the creak of the timbers.

Then it sang. I had never heard anything like it. The notes climbed the stays one after another, like someone walking up a staircase in the dark, and Mr Abernethy, who was a choirmaster in Bristol before he took to the sea, came up from the galley with a ladle still in his hand. He stood at the wheel with his mouth open. "Forte," he kept saying, which meant nothing to me until he explained it was the marking for loud, and that the bird was singing as though the whole Atlantic ought to hear it. By the second bell the watch below was humming along.

By the fourth morning the bird had gone, and nobody could say when. But the sails were drawing better than they had any right to, and a lad on the foredeck swore he'd found a scrap of paper wedged under the rail. Five lines ruled in ink, a little black clef at the start, and a sharp sign hooked on the fourth line like a fishhook. Nobody aboard could read it, so we pinned it by the binnacle and let the wind do the reading.

We should make Falmouth by Thursday. Tell your mother I've kept my boots dry and my voice in good order, and if you hear a sparrow singing in the hedge at home, stop and listen properly. Your loving father, Tom.