Sketchy fine line tattoo of a sparrow in brown and grey tones on the outer forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sparrow on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A sparrow perched side on, facing left, with a loose black outline and soft brown and grey fills for the wings, body and breast. The linework is thin and slightly broken, leaving the skin visible in places, and the small claws and eye are picked out in dark ink. The bird sits centrally on the forearm against plain pale skin, with a grey top and dark trousers at the edge of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Maureen had counted the sparrows in the privet every Sunday since the spring of 1987, and by October the count had dropped to nothing. She stood at the kitchen window with the teapot going cold in her hand and looked at the bare hedge, the grey fence, and the saucer of bread crusts she had left out for a week without a single beak touching them.

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Her neighbour's boy, Dev, leaned on the back gate with his phone in his hand. "Probably the cats," he said. Maureen told him the cats on Tanner Street were fat and lazy and that sparrows were far cleverer than cats, which was how they had survived everything London had thrown at them. He asked what she would do if they never came back. She said she would dig out the privet and plant something that flowered by June and didn't need birds to bother with it.

In the morning there was a brown feather on the path, then another by the water butt. On the fence post sat a small bird, fluffed up and rude, turned sideways with one bright eye fixed on her, as though it had been waiting for her to come out and make a fuss. She went back inside, fetched the heel of the loaf, tore it into pieces and scattered them on the saucer. Then she stood back from the window and kept very still.

It took a while. Three arrived, then five, squabbling in the hedge like neighbours who had never once been apart. Dev's phone pinged at the gate and he hurried off without a word. Maureen didn't look up. She had a count to keep, and for the first time in months the number was going the right way.