Hummingbird and flower on a calf
Realism · Calf · Black and grey · Photo
A hummingbird hovers beside a large trumpet-shaped flower, with its long beak reaching into the bloom. Soft shading gives the bird's feathers and the petals depth, and a dark swirling background sits behind the subject. Curling leaves and a thin vine run down the lower part of the design, all in greys and black.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Ada had the glasshouse door propped with a brick when the bird came in, a grey-green thing no longer than her thumb, striking the panes like a thrown pebble. It dropped into the trumpet vine by the potting bench and kept going, beak down the throats of the bells, too quick to count.
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Mr Haskett wanted it caught. He had paid eleven pounds for that vine from a collector in Bristol, and a letter had come from a man in Lisbon asking for a pair of hummingbirds for his conservatory. "Catch it, Miss Pell, and we'll both be remembered." She laid muslin over the bench and waited, and the bird returned each morning to the same bloom, as though it had signed its name there.
By the third day she stopped reaching. She sat on an upturned crate with her tea going cold and watched it feed, the dark swirl of the leaves behind it, the petals opening like brass horns. Its beak fitted the flower exactly. Nobody had warned her that a thing could fit so well.
On Friday she unhooked the door and let the morning in. The bird went out low over the wall, and she heard it before she saw it again, a thin hum over the lane. Mr Haskett found the muslin folded on the bench and asked where the bird had gone. Ada told him the vine had been pollinated, which was true, and that he should water it on Tuesdays.
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