Small solid black tattoo of two birds perched on a thin branch with a flower bud, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two birds on a branch on the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two bird silhouettes perched together on a thin branch that ends in a small flower or bud. The design is a solid black silhouette with little internal detail, and the branch extends to the left while the bud sits to the right. It sits on smooth skin against a plain background, with a dark-haired head and shoulder partly visible at the top of the frame.

Back Swallow Bird Branch Flower Bud

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

Dear Wilf,

Keep reading

The swallows came back to Greystone on Tuesday, two of them, and they sat on the bent hawthorn that grows out of the east curtain wall as if they had never been away. I watched from the kitchen window with the kettle going cold. You will laugh, but I thought of the summer you climbed up there to fetch the kite and came down with a bramble in your sleeve and a sprig of blossom behind your ear.

The castle is not much to look at now. The roof went in the winter of the big frost, and Mr Cairns from the village has the fallen stones piled by the gate, numbered in chalk, waiting for a man with money who never comes. But the hawthorn keeps putting out its thin green shoots, one long arm reaching for the gap where the stair used to be, and the birds have taken to sitting on it in pairs as if they were discussing the weather.

Last week one of them flew off toward the moor and I was sure I had lost it. I sat on the step with my boots wet and waited. It came back at dusk with a feather in its beak, low over the tarn, and landed beside the other as neatly as you please. I have decided that is how it will be with us, if you ever stop being so stubborn about the ferry timetable.

Come home for the hay. Bring nothing but yourself and the good penknife. The swallows will be gone by September, and I would rather you saw them with me than heard about them from the post.

Yours, Margaret