Black silhouette tattoo of three birds perched on a thin branch with small leaves, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three birds perched on a branch

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three bird silhouettes sitting on a slender branch that curves across the skin, with a small leaf at each end. The birds and branch are filled with solid black ink, with no shading or visible fine detail. The image is a close photograph of the forearm against a patterned dark fabric, with the design placed diagonally across the frame.

Forearm Bird Branch Leaves 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 branch was still green when Mared Coyle hung it over the coconut shy at Hollin Cross, and by the third night of the fair it was sagging under three black birds she had cut from sheet tin and pinned along its length. Nobody on the showground knew who had taught her to cut tin like that. Ezra Lunn, who ran the Wonder Show and had an opinion on everything, said it was the shape of the leaves that gave her away, and he would not say more.

Keep reading

Each evening a child paid a penny to sit at the far end of the stall and count the birds before the lamps went out. The birds never stayed counted. One boy swore the middle one had flown to the lamp post and back. A girl from the cake stall said the bird nearest the leaves turned its head whenever someone told a lie. Mared let them believe what they liked, took the pennies, and wiped the branch with a damp cloth at dawn so the leaves would not curl.

On the last night of the fair the wagons were already hitched when Mared went back for the branch and found a fourth bird sitting on the tip of the twig, where a leaf should have been. It was smaller than the others and it was not tin. It was warm, and its eye was open. She lifted the branch carefully, the way you would lift a sleeping thing, and carried it to the yard behind the last caravan.

Ezra took one look and sighed. 'That one's yours now,' he said, 'so you'll have to stay put long enough to feed it.' Mared unhitched the mare that night. The wagons rolled out at first light without her, the fair went on down the valley, and the branch, when she looked again, had grown a new leaf at each end.