Realistic colour tattoo of a yellow and grey songbird perched on a dark branch with willow catkins, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Yellow songbird on a willow branch

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A small songbird with a grey head, grey wings and a bright yellow breast sits side on a dark branch. Faint grey pussy willow catkins fade into the background behind it. The bird is shaded with soft blended tones, and the branch and catkins are rendered in softer grey shading.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Bird Songbird Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit close, Peggy, and mind the kettle. You'll want to know why your grandad never went near the old willow by Harrow Mill in March, and it isn't the ducks. It was the winter of 1952, the pond froze to the bottom, and the catkins were still shut tight on every twig when young Eddie Frane came up the lane with his father's shotgun and an empty glass case under his arm.

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Eddie meant to stuff a bird for the schoolroom, and the only one anybody had seen that spring was a little yellow thing with a grey hood, sitting side on to the sun on the lowest branch. Mrs Holm at the post office said it was a sign of a hard summer. Eddie's father said it was a sign of a fine case. Nobody thought to ask the bird.

Eddie raised the gun, and the bird, which had been waiting, I always say, turned its head and looked at him as if he owed it rent. He stood there till his arms ached. Then the catkins along the whole bank began to split, all at once, like a town clock striking out of turn, and the bird sang one sharp note and then a run of them, and Eddie laughed so hard he dropped the case in the reeds.

He never did stuff a bird. He set the glass case on the mantel, empty, and his mother kept his pennies in it until she died. And every March after, when the willow goes silver, somebody in Harrow stands at the bottom of the lane to see if the yellow one has come back. Mind, Peggy, it's your turn to watch the lane this year.