Black and blue ornamental owl tattoo with filigree patterning, perched on a thin branch across the upper back.

Ornamental owl perched on a branch

Back · Mixed · Photo

A large owl with a frontal pose and intense round eyes sits on a thin branch. Bold black outlines and dense black feather work frame the body, while the face and chest are filled with fine swirling filigree linework. Blue and teal wash shading sits within the ornamental areas, and the bottom of the design fades into the skin tone.

Back Owl Branch Feather Filigree Eye

Find an artist for this

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

Now sit close, you lot, and mind the fire, because this is the one about Heskin Rock and the owl that counted the boats. You'll not hear it at the ferry café, where they tell the lighthouse keeper's ghost instead, but the owl was there first.

Keep reading

Every autumn the lamp on Heskin swept the water, and every autumn the men of Cuil Bay rowed out past it for the herring. The owl lived in the old rowan above the chapel wall. Nobody owned it. It sat on the one thin branch that leaned out over the sea, with eyes like two lamps somebody had forgotten to dim, round and steady, and it never once looked away from the water.

Old Ailsa Brand kept the cottage below that rowan. She claimed the owl named each boat before its sail cleared the point. Her son Donal went out one October with the wind backing north-west, and that night the rowan was silent. The owl always spoke when the weather was turning, and it always spoke when a boat was coming home, so the silence was the worst sound she had ever known.

Donal came in at first light, rowing a borrowed skiff with a split oar. The branch was empty. The owl sat on the chapel roof facing the harbour, counting. Ailsa swore after that it had flown out through the storm and pulled the missing boat home by its line with those patient eyes. You and I know she was tired, and grief makes birds bigger.

So when the herring come back past the point and the sea goes from blue to green along the rocks, look for the rowan. If the owl is sitting on it, every boat is home. If it isn't, go and find out why, and be quick about it.