Black and white illustration of a fantail bird with a fanned tail of patterned feathers, drawn as a flash-style design with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised fantail bird design

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black fantail bird with a white eyebrow stripe is shown mid-flight, with its tail fanned upwards. The tail and wing feathers are filled with bold white and black patterns, including scalloped and leaf-like shapes. The design is set on a plain white background with no body or skin visible.

Bird Feather Pattern Wing Tail

Find an artist for this

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

The fantail came to Mossop's Travelling Wonder the week the elephant died, and nobody could say where it had come from. It sat on the rigging above the ring and flicked from pole to pole, snapping up the moths that rose off the sawdust lamps. When Ada Mossop shouted at it to go, it only fanned its tail at her and chattered, as if she were the one who had got it wrong.

Keep reading

The show had been shrinking for years. The wagons went first, then the lion, then the boy who could bend iron with his teeth. Crowds in the market towns grew thin, and the coins that came through the flap were smaller every night. Tilly Vane, who walked the high wire, swore the bird helped her. When she wobbled over the drop, it would dart across her eyes in a flash of black and white, and she would step right and keep her footing. Ada told her that was nonsense, and then watched it happen twice more.

In the last week at Ferrisby Common, Ada sat on an upturned bucket counting coins into a tin that rattled too loudly. The bird landed on the tent pole beside her and spread its tail. The feathers fanned out like a fan of white scallops and black leaves, every pattern drawn sharp against the canvas. She asked it plainly what it wanted. It flicked once, flew out through the open flap, and kept going over the hedge towards the north road.

In the morning the wagons were loaded and the big top was struck. Ada followed the hedgerow on foot, the tin under her arm, and found the bird perched on a gatepost at the field's edge. It fanned its tail once at her, then dropped into the grass ahead, and she walked on after it.