Solid black silhouette of a swallow in mid-flight with forked tail and swept wings, shown on a plain white background as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow in flight silhouette

Black and grey · Flash

A single swallow is shown in flight, facing right, with its wings swept up and back and its forked tail spread. The bird is rendered as a solid black silhouette with no internal linework, shading or detail. The plain white background leaves the outline as the only composition element.

Swallow Bird Flight Silhouette

Find an artist for this

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 rain came in sideways off the estuary at ten past eight, and the awning over Mr Okonedo's stall gave up its last grip on the north corner of the fish market. I was holding the tarpaulin with my knees when the swallows came down low over the car park, dozens of them, skimming the puddles as if someone had laid the tarmac just for them.

Keep reading

Dad always said swallows fly low before rain because the insects drop, and that the birds know the weather better than the forecast. I never believed him until that morning, when one swallow broke off from the rest and tilted hard over the stalls, wings swept back, tail forked like a pair of scissors cutting the grey. It went past the crates of mackerel and the hand-lettered sign for cockles, straight out over the bins at the far gate, and it did not look back.

By nine the rain had settled into the steady kind that makes the gutters sing. Mrs Pryce from the bakery brought two teas in paper cups and asked whether I meant to stand there all day staring at nothing. I said I was watching the birds. She squinted up, laughed at me, and then stopped laughing, because twelve more swallows were coming in over the roofs, all heading the same way, dark against the white cloud like thrown ink.

I let the awning drop and tied it off. By the time the market thinned, I went looking for the bird I had followed with my eyes. I found it on the top hinge of the far gate, rain running off its back, watching me the way Dad used to watch the tide turn.