Small fine line black tattoo of three birds in flight on a woman's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three birds in flight on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the upper back and left shoulder of a woman with a long blonde plait, with her face out of frame. Three small solid black birds in flight sit in a loose triangle near the shoulder blade. The tattoo is in black ink only, with simple flat silhouettes and no shading, against light, even skin tones and a white lace top.

Fine line Back Shoulder Bird Flying bird Swallow 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

Sit closer, the wind up here reads over a man's shoulder if he sits too far from the fire. You want the story of the Gallows Pass, or of the three swallows? Everyone wants the swallows. Fine.

Keep reading

Ysolde Marr kept goats above Harrow Col, and every March she watched for the swallows coming up the valley from the south, low and quick, stitching the air. Three of them, always three, the same three she had named the winter her husband walked down to the lowland market and did not walk back. Thessaly, Bran, and the little one with the torn tail. They nested under the eaves of her byre, and she never once asked where they went in winter, because a woman who asks that gets an answer she cannot carry.

The year the snow came early, the swallows were late. Ysolde climbed to the cairn every morning and counted the sky. On the ninth day, when she had given up and was banking the stove with peat, a grey cloud dropped onto the pass and something tapped at the shutter. Thessaly, wet to the bone, one wing folded wrong. Behind her came Bran, then the torn-tailed one, circling and circling until all three were inside the room, shaking feathers over the bread.

They stayed until the thaw. Then they lifted off in a loose triangle, the way birds do when they mean to come back, and Ysolde stood in the doorway until she could no longer tell them from the hawks.