Black and grey tattoo of a front-facing owl with detailed ornamental feathers and talons, on the back.

Ornate owl tattoo in black and grey

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A front-facing owl with large staring eyes, a pale beak, and a wing held against the body. The linework is fine and dense, with shading on the eye rings, feather bands and wing, and decorative scrollwork and patterned feathers. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey ink on lightly freckled skin.

Back Owl Eye Feather Talon Wing Scrollwork

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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

The owl arrived the week the frost set hard on the top field, and it took the hay rake at the end of the barn as if it had paid for the spot. Dad would have called it a barn owl, but this one had ear tufts like horns and a face the colour of old pewter, and it stared at me with the flat, unblinking patience of a bailiff.

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I came out at five each morning to break the ice on the trough and count the ewes through the gate. Every morning the owl watched me do it. I started talking to it, the way you talk to a dog that won't come in. I told it about the price of feed, about Tom at the auction who sold the Dexter heifers for less than they were worth, about the letter from the bank that I kept folded in my apron pocket like a bad tooth.

On the last morning of January the owl was gone. In its place lay a single grey feather on the rake, and beside it a small ring of pressed snow where something had sat for a long time. I picked up the feather. Its edges were ruled with fine dark lines like the margins of a ledger, and when I turned it to the light I saw a pattern of scrolls I had never noticed before.

I drove to the bank that afternoon and asked for another month. The manager, a young man with a pen behind each ear, agreed without looking up. I think he had been watching me too. The feather stays in my coat now, and every frosty morning I still nod to the empty rake before I open the gate.