Watercolour-style tattoo of two colourful hummingbirds on the upper thigh, one hovering beside the other perched on a thin branch.

Two hummingbirds on a thigh

Thigh · Colour · Photo

A hummingbird hovers on the left while a second bird perches on a dark branch on the right, both rendered with loose, soft-edged shading. The painterly colour washes run through pink, red, green, yellow and blue, with dark ink strokes and splashes around the birds. The design wraps across the outer thigh with the birds framed by open skin.

Thigh Hummingbird Bird Branch Splash Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

There was once a travelling show called Harrow's Wonder that went from town to town on three wagons and one striped tent. By the time the lions had been sold and the strongman had gone off to work the docks, the crowds came only on wet Saturdays, and the owner, Mr Harrow, counted the takings every night with his back to his daughter.

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Her name was Nell, and she painted the posters. When the last tin of watercolour was nearly dry she mixed what was left into a rag of pinks and greens and daubed two small birds across the back of the tent flap, one hanging in the air, one resting on a black branch. In the morning a real hummingbird was sitting on the tent pole above the ring, its throat flickering red as a coal. Nobody had seen one so far north. It stayed three days and drank from a saucer of sugar water Nell set on the rigging.

A man in a grey coat arrived on the fourth day with a cage and a purse. He said there was a collector in the city who would pay more than the whole season had earned. Mr Harrow looked at the purse for a long time. Nell said nothing, but when the man reached for the bird, the painted one dropped out of the canvas flap and hovered between his hand and the pole, and the live bird went with it. The man swore and left with his cage empty.

That night they struck the tent and loaded the wagons, and the birds rode on the back of the last one. They never did reach the city. Folk on the road say the show still moves, slower each year, and that if you look at the back of its tent in the rain you will find two birds painted there, one hovering, one on a branch, and that neither has ever once been put away.