Black and grey fine line tattoo of an ornate hummingbird with swirling filigree wings and tail, on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate hummingbird on the upper back

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a stylised hummingbird with a long curved beak, wings and tail built from fine looping swirls and curls. The linework is thin and even, with small dotted filigree details. The tattoo sits on bare skin across the upper back, with dark hair falling over the opposite shoulder.

Fine line Shoulder Hummingbird Bird Swirl Filigree Feather Tail Beak Wing

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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 wire had to be drawn three times before Tamsin Pascoe was allowed near the bench. Her master, Josiah Venn, had rules about it, and about the lamp, which had to be lit before the tide turned so the flame would not shiver. Nobody in Porthkellis ordered filigree any more. The fishing wives wanted plain gold hoops and the summer visitors wanted something they could photograph. So when a letter came from Lisbon, written in a hand as fine as thread, asking for one brooch in the shape of the bird that had hung over the harbour all August, Josiah set it on her bench, said nothing, and went out to the Anchor.

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The only picture was a pencil sketch folded inside the envelope: a long curved beak, a body no bigger than a thimble, a tail like a blown spray of sea. Tamsin drew it out in wire first, looping and curling until the swirls outran the bird and she had to coax them back. She worked through three nights with the lamp lit, soldering dots of filigree no larger than grains of salt along the wings until her eyes ached and the harbour bells rang the hours past.

On the last night the wire seemed to warm under her fingers, the curls tightening the way a watch spring does. She set the final dot at the throat, placed the brooch on the windowsill to cool, and went to bed with the lamp still burning.

In the morning the sill was bare, the latch lifted, and a thread of silver lay across the quay like a dropped ribbon. Gulls were shrieking at something above the harbour wall. Tamsin leaned out and saw a small bright shape heading east over the rooftops, its tail trailing loops behind it, and she laughed aloud, because the Lisbon money was already spent and she had no idea how she would explain it to Josiah.