Two feet with black ink tattoos on the top of each foot, one showing five flying birds and the other a birdcage with birds, both with Est 1997 in script.

Birds and birdcage on matching feet

Other · Black and grey · Photo

Two bare feet show matching tattoos on the top of each foot. The left foot has five black silhouetted birds in flight above the script text Est 1997, and the right foot has an open birdcage with a few birds flying out, above the same text. The ink is solid black and grey with soft shading on the cage, and the photo is taken against a pale tiled floor.

Other Bird Birdcage Script Flying bird

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 cage had come down from my nan's loft, and its door had rusted shut the way she always said it would, so Dad spent the Thursday before the wedding at the kitchen table with a tin of oil and a butter knife, muttering at the hinge. "Est 1997," he said when it finally swung without a shriek. "That's the year you two started squabbling over the same bedroom. Don't let anyone tell you it's the year you got married."

Keep reading

On the morning itself, Jo stood in the barn above Holmfirth with the cage on a trestle table between the cake and the fairy lights, trying to keep the two budgies from panicking in their paper bag. The man who'd sold them to Dad said they were good for weddings, which I took to mean they wouldn't bite the vicar. When the moment came, Jo lifted the little latch and her hands shook so badly the door banged against the bars. The budgies didn't move. One of them looked at the gap, then at the rafters, then at Dad, as if he owed it an explanation.

In the end it was the groom's grandad who solved it, by clapping his hands twice and shouting "Go on, then!" like he was sending a lad down the pub. The birds shot out past the beams and the whole barn went quiet except for one small sigh from Jo. Only one bird came back. It settled on the edge of the cage, turned its head twice, and stayed there through the speeches.

Nobody coaxed it out. When we left, Dad was still standing by the open door, running his thumb along the hinge he'd oiled, and I heard him say to nobody in particular, "Well, it still works."