Black tattoo of two birds perched on a leafy branch with a third bird flying above, on the inner wrist.

Two birds on a branch on a wrist

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black tattoo shows two birds sitting side by side on a thin branch that extends to the right and ends in leaves. A single smaller bird flies above and to the right of the branch. The design uses bold silhouette-style fill with little internal detail, set against pale skin in a close, evenly lit photograph.

Other Bird Branch Leaves 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

Pass me that colander, and mind the steam. No, you'll not look at the stew, you'll look at me, because this is the bit that matters. The Margaret Dunn came round the Firth in March with a cargo of slate and a cook who had no business being at sea, which was me. Every dawn two sparrows sat on the lee rail outside the galley door, shoulder to shoulder, like a pair of old men waiting for the pub to open.

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The ship's boy, Davy Lowe, was twelve and afraid of everything except the cat. He swore those birds were his brothers come back from the dead, and I told him he was daft, then fed them crumbs off my own fingers. Nobody moved them on, not even the mate, who'd have thrown a bucket at a gull. When the wind turned hard off Flamborough they hunkered into the rigging and didn't budge, and we came in soaked and whole, every one of us.

Then off the Humber, in a flat grey calm, one of them lifted off the rail and went straight for the shore. Davy stood there with his bread knife in his hand, watching it shrink to a speck over the mudflats. The other stayed put, fluffing itself against the cold, and never once looked after its mate. Davy didn't speak for a day.

In June, when we were back at Sunderland, the little bird came down onto that same rail with a feather missing and sat itself beside the other one as if it had only nipped to the shops. Davy cried into the potato peelings. So when you see a bird fly off and the other one stay put, don't go calling either of them cowardly. Now give that stew a stir, it's catching, and tell me what you think of the bread.