Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a grey and white owl with orange eyes perched on a brown birdhouse, with a teal circle behind it, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl on a birdhouse on the upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A grey and white owl with orange eyes sits on a brown birdhouse, set against a pale teal circle and magenta slashes of colour. The owl is rendered with bold black outlines, smooth colour fills and speckled feather detail on its head and chest. The composition is centred and fills the frame, with the birdhouse anchoring the bottom and the teal circle framing the owl's head.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl came to Mrs Pellow's boarding house the winter the sea took the harbour wall, and she would not be moved on. She sat on the gutter above the back door with her feathers puffed against the wind, and when the lodgers asked why she did not go up to the cliffs where owls belong, Mrs Pellow only said that the bird had asked for a roof.

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Mrs Pellow had a birdhouse nailed to the washing line pole, painted brown the year her husband went to sea and never painted again. Nobody had lived in it since. Her grandson Tom, who was nine and sure of most things, said the owl was too big for it, and that owls did not want houses anyway. The owl turned her yellow eyes on him and said nothing, which Tom took as agreement, though his grandmother did not.

All that February the fishing boats came home short. Men stood on the quay with their caps in their hands and counted the lights going out on the water. Each night the owl flew down to the birdhouse, looked in through the round hole, and flew back up to the gutter. Mrs Pellow, watching from the scullery window, began to understand that the bird was not sheltering there. She was keeping a lamp lit inside, a small glow no one else could see.

On the third night of the gale, Tom woke to a tapping on the glass. He went down in his socks and found the back door open and the owl standing on the step, wings half spread, the birdhouse torn loose from its nail and hanging by one wire. Out past the broken wall a single lantern was swinging, slow and steady, towards the harbour mouth. Tom ran for his grandmother. By the time the boat was in, they had all come home.

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