Considering the velocity of the approaching missle, those pigeons reacted quickly!
In the Teds Holdover video’s he’s got some slo-mo shots of birds as they’re about to be hit with a pellet, and some notice it right before impact, and I think there might actually be one where it rears it’s head back and gets missed.
The pellets are going about 900 fps when he’s using a .177, I think he’s using a .25 cal of late but the velocity is close if not the same.