Close view of a blue, teal and gold tattoo of birds within an ornate oval frame on the upper back, above a grey sweater with red fox motifs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue bird ornament on upper back

Back · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows the upper back and neck of a person wearing a grey knitted jumper with red and white fox motifs around the neckline. A colourful tattoo sits between the shoulder blades, showing what appears to be two birds within an ornamental oval or scroll frame. The tattoo uses blue, teal and gold ink, and the shot is cropped at the top so the hairline is partly visible.

Back Bird Ornament Scroll Oval frame

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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

The stove has gone out again, and you are on your knees at the hatch with a wet match while the kettle knocks against its bracket on the back ring of the Mercy Jane. Your uncle Ivo would have swung the tiller round the bend by now without looking at the bank. Nine days on the Trent and you still hear the lock keepers laughing when you reverse.

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The kingfisher comes every morning below Gainsborough, bright as a dropped coin, and lands on the same mooring post. Ivo swore it was the bird that had followed his father's boat down from Newark. He had a pair of them painted on the brass plate above the stove, two birds inside an oval of curling scrollwork, blue and teal with gold where the paint tin ran out of everything else. You rub that plate with your thumb whenever the smoke comes back.

On the tenth morning the post stands empty. You wait with the engine ticking and the line slack in your hand, and you think about selling to the Lincoln man who offered too much and too quickly. Then there is a splash in the reeds, a flash of blue, and a second bird comes skimming low over the water. The first one answers it from nowhere you can see, and then both are on the post, side by side, exactly as they are on the plate.

You untie the line and let the current take the Mercy Jane round the bend. Behind you the calling goes on for a long while, and the brass plate catches the sun above the stove, and you steer for the bridge without once looking back at the post.