Black and grey realism tattoo of a chickadee perched on a thin branch, shown on the upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chickadee perched on a branch on the chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A small songbird, likely a chickadee with a dark cap and pale cheek, sits on a thin branch with its tail extending to the right. The bird is rendered in fine linework with soft grey shading across the wings and body, and the branch has delicate needle-like sprigs. The design is in black and grey ink only, set against plain skin with no other background elements.

Realism Fine line Chest Bird Branch Songbird

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 chickadee came to the sill of the telegraph office the morning after the first hard frost. Ada Pelletier had been told by Mr Groves that birds were nothing but trouble on the wires, so she crumbled her crust onto the ledge when he was out back smoking. The bird had a cap as black as a stove lid and a pale cheek like skimmed milk. It studied her sideways, the way the lumber company clerks studied a new invoice, then took a crumb and went.

Keep reading

Wires came in from the camps up the Restigouche in ragged bursts, mostly about rope, horses and whether the river had gone out. The chickadee kept to its own timetable. Each morning at seven it dropped onto the spruce sprig Ada had tied to the rail, puffed itself against the cold and waited for her. She called it Tuesday, because it never came on Mondays, and decided this was a sort of principle.

In February a message came up the line that Harold Dunning had gone through the ice on the Little Sou'west. She had danced with him once at the Grange, badly, and laughed about it for a week. She sat with her palm flat on the key and did not tap a reply for a long time. When at last she did, the bird was still on its branch, picking at the frost as if nothing in the valley had changed.

They brought him down on a sled in March, and the wire that followed was only a list of forms. Ada signed each one. On the Tuesday after, she tied a fresh sprig to the rail and waited with her coat buttoned to the throat. The chickadee arrived at seven exactly, fluffed and watchful, and looked at her as though it had kept its word and expected her to keep hers.