Black and grey realism tattoo of two birds perched on a bare branch, placed on a woman's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two birds on a branch across a shoulder blade

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the upper back and shoulder of a woman who is turned away from the camera. Two plump, crested birds sit side by side on a thin, leafless branch that tapers out to the right. The linework is fine and the shading is soft and graded, giving the feathers and bodies a realistic, three-dimensional look. The tattoo is entirely in black and grey ink against the skin, and it is centred on the shoulder blade.

Realism Back Bird Branch Twig Shoulder Upper back

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The first tray is always the sourdough, because it needs the longest to come out of the tin and I like to see it cool before the light gets in. I carry it out to the yard wall at twenty to five, the sky still the colour of wet slate, and there they are on the damson branch, same as every morning since the frost came in. Two of them, crested and round as dumplings, sitting so close their wings nearly touch.

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Dennis, who taught me to score a loaf, used to say waxwings only come to a place that smells of something worth eating. I told him they came for the berries gone soft on the tree, and he said that was just a longer way of saying the same thing. We had that argument for eleven winters and I never once won it. He handed the keys to his nephew in the spring and went to live with his sister in Harrogate, and on the last morning I stood in the yard with flour still on my hands and watched one bird lift off, circle the bins, and settle back.

Now I count them. One on the left, one on the right, the branch between them so thin it ought to snap under the weight and never does. The nephew wants the shutter up by five and the whole street full of the smell by six, and I tell him birds don't keep to timetables. He thinks I've gone soft. Perhaps I have.

This morning there were three. A third bird came down on the very tip of the twig, out where it thins to nothing, and the other two shuffled along to make room without looking at it. I stood there with the tray going cold until the light came up grey behind the flats, and then all three went at once. The branch sprang back, empty, and I went in to start the second batch.