When thinking about tattoos the old cliché of the tattoo dive in a port-of-call and the drunken sailor who staggers inside is never far away.

Last month Scott McDowell worked late into the night to meet his Christmas orders. For those wandering the waterfront, along the Menemsha Basin Road, there was the familiar ringing of the Menemsha Bight buoy in the distance but much closer came the continuous sound of a tapping hammer. Mr. McDowell runs a workshop and store called The Copperworks of Martha’s Vineyard. This is his fifth year at his current location.

At dawn on the last Friday of the year there were just a few ripples in the waters off Owen Park in Vineyard Haven. The temperature hovered in the low 40s as the morning sun first peeked out from behind the treetops on the banks of the Lagoon.

Just then six women rowing a thirty-two-foot Cornish pilot gig appeared from behind the harbor jetty. They had just finished their morning workout, rowing the gig Grace between East and West Chops, and were headed for shore.

Volunteers at this year’s Christmas Bird Count spotted 119 species, according to Gazette bird columnist Susan Whiting, a cocompiler of the annual event on the Island. Though the species count was similar to recent years, the number of individual birds spotted, 21,730, was lower than in most counts of late. In 2010, only 15,926 individual birds were counted, due to few participant, but in 2009 32,114 individual birds were recorded. In 2008, that number was nearly 83,000.