Three-panel photo of a black and grey realistic pine forest tattoo with flying birds, shown on a lower limb.

Pine forest with birds in flight

Realism · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Three photographs of the same tattoo from different angles show tall pine trees, bare undergrowth and silhouetted birds flying across the upper area. The linework is soft and the shading is built up in grey washes, with darker tones for the foliage and lighter grey for distant trees. Faint reddish-brown tints appear on the far trees, while the rest of the design is black and grey, and the trees are framed against pale skin.

Realism Botanical Calf Pine tree Forest Tree Bird Branches

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan, the Inverness train was cancelled again, so I have been sitting in the ticket hut with the kettle and your bird book open on my knee. Out past the platform the pines have gone the colour of weak tea in this low light, and at four o'clock the rooks came over in a loose black rope, heading west towards the old plantation. Mr Tulloch says they are the same ones that nested in the big Scots pine by the water tower before the council had it felled. He says rooks always know where the wood was.

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I walked down the line this morning to see the tall ones standing where the bracken has died back. Their trunks go up straight as church pillars and the top branches thin out into nothing, as if the wind has been combing them for a hundred years. Underneath, the birch and hazel are all twisted fingers. You would have liked it, though you would have complained about the damp. A fox watched me from the cutting and did not run until I took a step, which I thought was good manners.

Here is the part I wanted to tell you. Last Tuesday a man got off the wrong train with a canvas bag and asked if there was a bus to the forest road. I said there wasn't one until Thursday. He sat on the bench and drew the trees on the back of a timetable, very fast, with a pencil he kept behind his ear. When he handed it over it was the water tower pine with the rooks lifting out of it, and a faint pink smudge on the far trunks where the sun had come through the cloud. I have pinned it above the kettle.

The 17:40 has finally been signalled green, so I'll post this on the platform. Come up at Easter if the snow lets you. Bring the good boots and I will show you where the birds go to roost. Love, Maggie.