Black and grey photograph of a small fine line feather tattoo on the skin behind a woman's ear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small feather tattoo behind the ear

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small feather is tattooed on the skin directly behind the ear, angled along the curve of the head. The linework is thin and delicate, with fine strokes defining the quill and barbs and light shading giving the feather some depth. The photograph is black and grey, with long wavy hair and a window blind in the background.

Fine line Other Feather Ear Hair

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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

Sit closer, you lot, the fire only warms the side facing me. My grandmother's grandmother knew the edge of Harrowden Wood like her own kitchen, and she told this one about the jay that lived in the big oak where the lane gives up and becomes a path.

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There was a girl in the village called Nell Porrett who could never keep still. She climbed the churchyard wall, she ran the drove road barefoot, and when the minister's wife told her to mind her manners, Nell only laughed and went looking for the jay. The jay had one feather the colour of wet slate, long and narrow, and it would not give it up to anyone who asked nicely. It kept that feather tucked under its wing for a hundred winters, so the old folk said, and whoever found it would hear the wood speak.

Nell found it in the November rain, lying in the wet leaves at the foot of the oak. She picked it up, and the wood went quiet all at once, the way a room does before someone says your name. Then a voice came out of the hazels, dry as paper. "Put it somewhere the wind can't take it, girl, and go home before the lamps are lit."

She did as she was told. She never took it out again, and she never ran the drove road after that. The village said she had settled at last. But on still evenings, if you stand by the stile and listen, you can hear a jay calling her name from the trees, and something very light tapping at the edge of her hair like a question nobody has thought to ask.