Upper arm tattoo of a songbird in flight among raspberries, leaves and pink wild roses, in soft grey shading with muted colour.

Songbird and wild roses on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A songbird with outstretched wings hovers among trailing raspberries, serrated leaves and sprigs of foliage, drawn with fine outlines and soft grey shading. Several five-petalled pink roses with dotted centres sit across the lower part of the design, with a yellow-toned bird partly visible at the edge. The tattoo wraps around the upper arm and shoulder, and the composition is a naturalistic botanical scene with a loose, layered arrangement.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Shoulder Songbird Bird Rose Leaves Flower Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the raspberries on the south wall had gone dark, you had stopped counting the birds that came for them. Your uncle swore the wren was the only honest one, but the wren was small and easily startled. It was the grey-winged songbird that took the best of the canes each morning, lifting off with a fuss of feathers as though it had paid for them.

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Nobody at Hollin Farm wanted the orchard stripped before the fair at Thrush Cross, so you made a bargain with the bird. Every evening you left a saucer of split cherries on the gatepost, and every morning the saucer was empty and the raspberries were left alone. Your sister called it nonsense. She had her own bargains, mostly with the cat.

Then the wild roses along the lane came out in a rush, five pale petals apiece, and the bees went mad in them. Mr Pask came down the lane with a billhook and a face like weather, saying the hedge had to go before it swallowed the gate. You stood in the gap with your arms wide. He laughed at you until he saw the bird on the gatepost, wings open, refusing to leave.

He cut the hedge around you that year and left the roses standing. Every morning after, the songbird came down to the gatepost for its cherry as if there had never been any question of it, and you pretended not to watch it eat.