Colour neo-traditional tattoo of three owls perched on a branch with pink and blue blossoms, sitting on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three owls and blossoms on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large central owl with wide pink-rimmed eyes sits above two smaller owls on a branch, with blossoms and leaves scattered around the design. The linework is bold and the feathers are shaded with dots and scale-like patterns. Pink, red, blue, teal and yellow ink dominate the composition, which fills the upper arm and shoulder.

Neo-trad Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Owl Branch Flower Blossom Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cherry tree in the Larkspur courtyard had been planted the year the block opened, and for most of its life nobody looked at it twice. Then in April a big tawny owl with pale rings round her eyes arrived and settled two fledglings on the lowest branch as if she had booked it.

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The council sent a letter about the tree within a week. Branch overhang, it said, a risk to the walkway and the bins. I pinned it to the noticeboard by the lifts and watched residents read it with their shopping still on their wrists. Mrs Achebe from flat forty said the owls had been there first and the tree could wait until they fledged. Mr Dunne from the ground floor called that sentimental nonsense, then came back the next morning with a bag of peanuts for the pigeons and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking up.

I went out at dawn with a clipboard and a flask, meaning to count blossom for the report. Petals came down in slow loops and caught in the bin lids, on the wet tarmac, on the sleeve of my coat. The fledglings turned their heads to watch me, one blue-grey and one violet in the early light, and their mother kept her wide pink-rimmed eyes open and did not blink once while I wrote 'diseased' and then crossed it out.

The report went in without the word. The tree stayed, cut back a single arm's length from the walkway, and the owls shuffled along the branch to the part that was left. By June they had gone and the courtyard was quiet except for the pigeons. Some mornings I still find a petal folded into the lid of the blue bin, and I leave it there.