Fine line black outline tattoo of a flying bird behind a person's left ear, with a small stud earring visible nearby.

Flying bird tattoo behind the ear

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single-line outline of a small bird in flight, shown in profile with its wings raised, sits on the skin behind the ear. The linework is thin and even in solid black ink, with no shading, and the tattoo is set against a soft pinkish skin tone. The close crop keeps the focus on the bird, with the ear and hair framing it at the edge of the photograph.

Fine line Other Bird Flying bird Dove

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit down, the lot of you, and shush, because the lift's broken again and nobody's going anywhere until I've finished. You know Haverleigh House. Eleven floors of concrete and washing lines, and on the ninth landing there's a window with a crack in it like a cough. That's where the bird came. Nobody saw her arrive. One Tuesday in March the caretaker, Mr Okonedo, found a grey dove sitting on the sill as if she'd paid the rent.

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Doves don't like towers, he told her. They like church roofs and farmers' barns. But she didn't care what he liked. Every morning she was there, feathers puffed against the cold, watching the car park through the glass as though she was waiting for a bus. Old Mrs Halloran on the ninth floor started leaving crusts on the sill. Then the boy from flat 92, Dev, began drawing her in his exercise book, one unbroken line for each wing, never lifting his pencil, because he said that was the only honest way to draw a bird, all in one go, with no stopping to fix it.

Then one morning in April the window was open. Nobody could say who opened it. The sill was bare, the crusts were gone, and Dev's book lay on the step with a single bird on the last page, wings raised, flying left towards the river. Mrs Halloran swore she'd seen a dove on the rooftop aerial that same afternoon, but Mr Okonedo said that was nonsense, doves don't come back to a place they've left.

Now then, lift's coming. Mind the gap, and whatever you do, don't go looking for her on the roof. Some birds only ever stop long enough to be drawn.