This is Ron Swanson. He’s a young Lanner Falcon and I’ve been flying him for a few months now.

Ron is a rehab bird. At the beginning of the year, he flew into a window. I know. He’s not very smart. But then birds of prey generally aren’t. They’re the ultimate hunting machine, with a set of huge, well-developed eyes. Big eyes = small brain. I have super-tiny eyes. Ron doesn’t.

So anyway, he flew himself into a window and got a tremendous bump on his head. Then he spent a lot of time in a hospital, which he LOVED because his food was dropped into his mouth each day. To be able to do nothing and still eat is every bird of prey’s biggest dream.

And now Ron needs to get fit if he’s ever going to go back to the wild where he was born and belongs. So I fly him hard to a lure. It means I get to stand in the middle of a field swinging a leather pad at the end of a string while he finds some super-high perch and laughs at me from it. And I love every moment of it.

I’m really just telling you all of this so that I can show off a photo of him today that I washed in pink. I like pink.