Colour realism tattoo of a hummingbird in mid-flight with a red head and blue-green wings on the back of a hand against a dark background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hummingbird tattoo on the back of a hand

Realism · Hand · Colour · Photo

A hummingbird in flight is tattooed on the back of a hand, with its wings spread upward and its long beak pointing down and to the right. The bird is shaded with soft, blended gradients in blue, green, purple and red, giving a painted, watercolour-like finish. The bird sits in the centre-right of the frame against a plain dark background, with the fingers curled at the bottom.

Realism Hand Hummingbird Bird Hand

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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

Dear Marta, you will not believe the man who came through lane four this morning. His papers were in perfect order, and when I asked him to lay his hand flat on the glass, he did it without being told twice. There on the back of it was a hummingbird, wings flung up as if it had been caught mid-hover and kept there for good.

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I have seen a great many birds at this crossing. Swallows nest under the eaves of the old customs shed, and the gulls fight over the bins behind the canteen. But nobody has ever brought a hummingbird through, and certainly not one painted so that the blue at its throat seemed to shift every time he moved his fingers. The red crown was the exact shade of the ink in our stamp pad. I told him so, and he laughed for the first time, a short cough of a laugh, and said his grandmother kept a jar of sugar water on her sill in Lisbon for the real ones that came through in spring.

I pressed the stamp down on his page, and the red came up bright and wet beside his photograph. He looked at the mark, then at the bird on his hand, and said that now the two of them matched. I did not know what to say to that, so I simply handed the passport back and wished him a safe onward journey.

I have been thinking about it all afternoon. Write and tell me whether you believe a bird can cross a border if it is only ink. I am inclined to think it can, provided someone stamps it. Tonight I will leave the kitchen window open a crack and see whether anything comes in. Yours, Ilse.