Small swallow tattoo in brown and grey with a red throat, placed on the upper chest near the collarbone and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow on the upper chest

Fine line · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A single swallow in flight is tattooed on the upper chest, close to the collarbone and shoulder. The bird has delicate outlines and soft grey-brown shading on its wings and body, with a small red patch at the throat. The tattoo sits on pale skin against a white top that has been pulled slightly aside, with the frame cropped below the chin.

Fine line Chest Swallow Bird Flight Wing

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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 swallows came back to Hollin Cross every April, under the iron ribs of the station roof, and every April the stationmaster, Amos Greave, complained about the mess on his platform. He swept it anyway. The birds took mud from the puddles by the water column and flew it up to their nests in quick, careless loops, and the trains rattled through beneath them without a single one being hit.

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One October a swallow with a rust-red throat did not go south. Greave found it on the cold boards by the ticket hatch, one wing held out stiff as a bent hinge. He carried it into the booking office, wrapped it in his spare waistcoat and set it in a biscuit tin on the warm lid of the stove. He fed it crushed flies from the window ledge and talked to it about the timetable, because the bird listened better than the district inspector did.

By March the wing had mended. Greave opened the office door at dawn, and the swallow went up past the signal arm, circled the station three times as if counting its platforms, and then turned south over the cutting. Greave went back to his kettle and said nothing to anyone about it.

The following April, a swallow dropped onto the milk churns and looked at him sideways. He had nothing to offer but a heel of bread, so he crumbled it onto the step and watched the bird take the first piece, then the second, and then rise to the ironwork with a bit of mud in its beak, as if the station had been expecting it all along.