Small black fine line tattoo of three flying birds on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with a long braid over the opposite shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three birds on a shoulder blade

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Three small black bird silhouettes are tattooed in a loose diagonal group on the upper back, beside the shoulder blade. The lines are thin and the shapes are simple, with solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is taken from behind, showing the wearer in a white lace bandeau with a long plait over one shoulder against a pale background.

Fine line Back Bird Flying bird Silhouette

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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

Sit down, the lot of you, the urn's only just boiled and I'm not telling this one standing up. You all think you remember the year the starlings came down on Coldharbour Road, but you were too busy looking at your shoes to see them properly. Three of them. They sat on the wire outside the Co-op like three full stops, and then they lifted off all at once, which starlings never do, and flew west over the allotments as if somebody had called their names.

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Nobody called them. That was the trouble with Alma Pryce's gran, who swore they were the Dunmore girls come back to fetch their brother. Nobody believed her, though the Dunmore boy did go missing that October and turned up in Bristol with a suitcase full of nothing but library books. Make of that what you like.

The birds came back every autumn after that, always three, always at dusk, and always pointing the same way across the rooftops. The old men used to say you could set your watch by them, and Mr Hollis did, and he was never late for anything again.

So here is what I'd tell you if you asked me properly. Keep your eyes up. Three is a crowd for a bird but a fair number for a town, and if you ever see three of anything heading out over the allotments at teatime, don't wave. Just go and put the kettle on.