{"id":22136,"date":"2026-02-05T16:59:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T16:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=22136"},"modified":"2026-02-07T18:55:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T18:55:27","slug":"pigeon-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=22136","title":{"rendered":"Pigeon Pie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2020 we had <a href=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=16169\">an unexpected visitor<\/a>: a sparrowhawk feasting on its prey in our back garden. The picture in the linked post was a still from a rather poor video, which we&#8217;ve now improved somewhat:<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 600px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('video');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-22136-1\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" loop=\"1\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/stabunsharpG05C15S13Z600.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/stabunsharpG05C15S13Z600.mp4\">https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/stabunsharpG05C15S13Z600.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>We thought the prey was a magpie originally, due to the racket being made by a <s>flock<\/s> mischief of them which attracted our attention. But now it&#8217;s looking more like it was a pigeon.<br \/>\nThanks to the very powerful software <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/FFmpeg\">ffmpeg<\/a>, the video has been stabilised, sharpened and colour balanced.<br \/>\nA1 is reading <em>Halcyon Years<\/em> by Alastair Reynolds &#8212; thanks A2! AR likes incorporating both noir and detective elements in his SF (cf the terrific <em>Century Rain<\/em>\u00a0and the Prefect Dreyfus novels), and here we&#8217;ve got Yuri Gagarin &#8212; well, sort of &#8212; as a mean-streets PI on a generation starship. There are touches of humour, and some Dickian nods in this tale: the sorrowfully forgetful robot, and the excessively polite one as it chucks our hero overboard. It all hangs together though, and a return to form.<br \/>\nA2 is rereading <em>Alias Grace<\/em> by Margaret Atwood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2020 we had an unexpected visitor: a sparrowhawk feasting on its prey in our back garden. The picture in the linked post was a still from a rather poor video, which we&#8217;ve now improved somewhat: We thought the prey was a magpie originally, due to the racket being made by a flock mischief &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=22136\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Pigeon Pie&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,14],"tags":[19,20,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22136"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22143,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22136\/revisions\/22143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}