Black and grey tattoo of a bird in flight with an arrow passing through its beak on the upper chest near the collarbone.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird in flight with arrow on upper chest

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded bird in flight, with wings spread and tail feathers fanned, is shown with a thin arrow running diagonally across it. The linework is dark and defined, with grey shading on the wings and body that gives them depth. The tattoo sits on pale skin near the collarbone, with dark hair at the top of the frame and a dark garment and orange fabric at the edges.

Chest Bird Arrow Feather

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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

Mind the step, that one's loose, and hush now, because the lamp is still turning and the old man in the tower doesn't like talk after dark. So. You want the swallow. Everybody wants the swallow. Sit where the wind can't find you.

Keep reading

Ada Penrose kept the light at Scarrow Point the winter her husband's chest gave out, and she kept it the way he had, with a tin of tallow on the sill and a grudge against the fog. The fog came in off the Dogger that November thick as wet wool, and the drifters were still out. She had one bow in the cottage, a yew thing her brother left behind, and one arrow with a red feather bound at the nock. Every hour she stood at the gallery rail and loosed it straight up into the murk, so the boats could hear the twang and know where the rock was.

Then a swallow came, far too late for the south, and it struck the lantern glass and dropped onto the rail with its breast heaving. Ada cupped it in her shawl and found a thread knotted round one leg, and on the thread a scrap of paper that said only LEAD US HOME in her son's square capitals. He was on the Margaret Ann, somewhere past the bar. She tied the paper to the arrow's shaft, went out on the gallery, and loosed it into the grey.

The swallow went after it like a thrown stone. It banked and dipped along the arrow's line, wings flat and forked tail open, and for an hour Ada heard nothing but the gulls and the slap of the swell. Then a horn sounded, faint and off to the east, and the bird came back alone, circling the lamp until the sky greyed. The arrow never returned. Nobody on Scarrow has ever found it, though my grandfather swore he saw a red feather caught on the Dogger buoy. Now go on home. The tide's turning and so am I.