Realism tattoo of a barn owl with spread wings in soft grey and brown shading with warm ochre accents, on the upper arm.

Barn owl with spread wings on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A barn owl with its wings spread wide faces the viewer, with its heart-shaped pale face, dark eyes and talons visible. The feathers are rendered with soft, blended grey and brown shading and fine feather detail, with a warmer ochre tone on the face and talons. The owl is centred on a curved section of upper arm, with the wings reaching out to both edges of the frame.

Realism Upper arm Owl Barn owl Wing Feather Talon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The barge was called the Marigold Pilgrim, though nobody on the Thames had called her anything but Pilgrim since the war, and the owl came aboard at Brentford in a wicker hamper that smelt of wet hay. Ada Coyle had bought the bird off a man who was tired of it, for two pounds and a promise to keep the hatch shut. I kept the hatch shut. I did not keep the bird quiet. She sat on the galley hatch all through the lock at Hampton Court, turning her heart-shaped face this way and that, as if she were counting us.

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She would not eat from the dish. Ada fed her mice from the tin, one at a time, and the owl took them with a clean tug and a look that said she had expected better. On the long reach past Walton she took to flying the length of the deck at dusk, wings opened wider than seemed possible for a thing so pale, and once she came down on the tiller and stood there with her talons hooked over the brass, ruffling in the wind off the water. Ada laughed till she had to sit down on the coal bunker. I did not laugh. I was steering.

We lost her at Teddington. The lock keeper's boy swore she had gone up into the willows, and we tied off and searched the bank until the light went brown and then grey. Ada stood at the stern rail with the hamper in her arms, empty. Then something pale came low over the water, wings spread to the very edges of the sky, and settled on the stern cleat as neatly as a letter onto a mat. She folded in her wings and looked at us both. Ada said nothing. Neither did I. We simply untied the lines and let the river take us on.