Black ink drawing of an ornate bird perched on a white background, built from flowing swirls, spirals and dotted circles, shown as a tattoo design without a body placement.

Ornate swirl bird design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bird, possibly a parrot, is shown perched with its head turned to the upper right and its long tail sweeping down to the left. The body and tail are filled with flowing black and white swirls, spirals and small dots, with heavier solid black areas balanced against fine white lines. The design is drawn in black ink on a plain white background with no body part visible.

Blackwork Bird Swirl Spiral Ornamental Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The green parrot came back to the Pennick orchard on Tuesday, the day after the first wind, and it sat on the top rail of the press-house gate as if it had paid for the seat. Dad says it's one of the Dunmore birds that got out when their aviary folded in the spring. I said it looked more like something that had escaped from a church window. Its head turned right round to watch me, and I swear the black swirls on its back were moving, slow as cider settling in the vat.

You'd have hated how much I've been thinking about it. Mum found me up the ladder with a bucket of windfalls, just staring. I'd been trying to count the Bramley drops, and every time I reached forty the bird shifted, its tail feathers unrolling down the wall like smoke, and I lost my place. She said I'd end up like Uncle Ray, who once spent a whole afternoon measuring a sparrow with a ruler.

Here's the thing, though. Dad has agreed to sell the top field in October, and the bird has been coming every morning to the same branch of the old Cox tree, the one you carved your initials into. This morning the initials had a little ring of dots beside them that I'm sure wasn't there last week. Pecked in, or dusted on, I can't tell which. I don't know what to make of it.

Come home for the picking if you can. The bird's still here, and I'd like you to see it before it decides to go.

Love, Jess