Black and grey realism tattoo of a bare tree with perched birds across a person's back, shown in two photos.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Birds perched on a bare tree across the back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Two photographs show a large tattoo of a twisting bare tree with several songbirds perched on its branches, covering the upper back and side. The linework is soft and the shading uses layered greys to give the branches and birds volume. The image is entirely black and grey, set against a natural outdoor background of stones, water and greenery in the top photo.

Realism Botanical Back Tree Bird Branches Bare tree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas Greave meant to fell the ash by the beck before the spring floods, because a dead tree leans, and leaning trees take fences with them. He sharpened the saw on a Sunday and carried it down the lane past the mill.

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Five birds were already on the tree when he reached it, perched along the bare branches like notes on a stave. They sat so still he took them for knots in the wood. They did not fly when he swung the saw up. They turned their heads to watch him, one after another, as if he were the odd one in the valley. Tomas stood a long time in the cold water, then went home with the saw still on his shoulder.

Nell Harrow from the chapel house began leaving crumbs on the flat stones beneath it. By May the branches had a faint green fuzz at every joint, and by midsummer the birds were singing in leaves that had not existed the year before. Tomas told the carter the frost had been the trouble all along, and the carter, who had seen the saw, did not argue.

Every evening after that Tomas walked the lane with his hands in his pockets to see whether they had stayed. They always had: five dark shapes on the limb above the water, waiting for him to say something.