Colour traditional-style tattoo of a perched falcon on the upper arm of a man in a grey sleeveless top, with blue-grey wings and orange back feathers.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Falcon perched on a branch on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A falcon stands on a bare branch with its head turned to the left, shown in profile across the upper arm. The bird has bold dark outlines, shaded blue-grey wings, rust-orange feathers across the back and banded tail feathers ending in yellow, with yellow talons gripping the branch. The photograph is taken indoors at close range, with the tattoo filling most of the frame and the wearer's face not visible.

Traditional Upper arm Bird Branch Feather Talon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the wind has not let up since Tuesday, and the keeper at Scarrow Point says the glass will not climb before the spring tides. I write this at the window of the lamp room with the wick trimmed low so the paper does not go yellow under my hand. You will laugh, but the kestrel is back on the rail again. The little brown one with the grey cap that came in off the Atlantic in October and would not be shifted. Mr Pardoe tried to frighten it with a broom and it simply turned its head and looked at him as though he were the one who had come uninvited.

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I have been thinking about what you said before I sailed, that a lighthouse is a place for a man who wants to be looked at by nothing but the sea. I do not think the falcon agrees with you. It sits on the old mooring post beside the signal mast as if it has been appointed to watch the channel, and every evening when I climb up to light the lamp it is there, feathers ruffled, talons gripping the grey wood. Last night it lifted off into the teeth of the gale and I was sure it would be torn to nothing. Instead it hung above the rocks, perfectly still, and then slid sideways like a thrown knife and was gone over the cliff.

I keep the logbook in the drawer beside the chronometer. Tonight I wrote the weather, the oil consumed, and the bird. Next week the relief boat comes. Tell your mother I am well and that I have not once been lonely enough to talk to the gulls. The kestrel, though, I may have to write a letter to.