Ink and watercolour drawing of a hummingbird perching, with teal, green, blue and yellow washes on a cut-out paper shape.

Watercolour hummingbird sketch

Mixed · Flash

A hummingbird perches side on, long bill pointing left, with its head turned towards the viewer. The linework is loose and sketchy in black ink, with hatching on the wings and body, and the wash is applied in teal, green, blue, yellow and orange. The bird sits on a white paper cut-out with splashes of teal and ink around it.

Hummingbird Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hummingbird came to Mrs Tully's boarding house in the second week of October, when the wind had turned the bay the colour of pewter and the guests had stopped coming down to breakfast. It hung at the scullery window for three mornings, its wings a blur against the glass, until Nell Tully opened the sash to see what it wanted. It wanted nothing. It went straight past her, over the coal scuttle, and perched on the brass rail of the kitchen range as if it had paid for the room.

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Nell's mother had kept the house before her and had never liked birds indoors. She said a bird inside meant a letter was coming, and a letter always meant somebody had died or was about to. So Nell fetched a saucer of sugar water and set it on the table, and waited. The bird drank, and in the afternoon it flew out over the harbour wall towards the lighthouse on the point.

Every day after that it came back at the same hour, bright as a lamp, its long bill pointing at the door. The lodgers grew fond of it. Mr Ashdown, who had been there since spring and paid in advance, began saving crusts for it, and once he swore the bird had looked him in the eye and nodded.

On the last day of the month a telegram boy came up the hill with a wet cap and a face like paper. Nell read it standing in the porch. It was from Ashdown's brother in Penzance, asking him to come home. Nell gave the boy a penny and went back inside. The rail was empty, and the saucer held nothing but a single green feather floating on the sugar water.