The circle of life

Over the last three years, I've developed an attachment to the birds that frequent our garden. It all started when Nickolai and Damian gifted us a bird feeder during their visit in August 2021. It started off as just a few random birds, but now we have close to (if not more than) a hundred birds regularly visiting our feeder. They eat about 1.5 kg of bird food on most days! We regularly spot fledgling birds, having just learned how to fly, but not how to eat, sit on the garden fence while their parents feed them off our feeder. It seems that most birds have two batches of young each year: one in late spring and one in mid autumn or so. But besides the common wild birds that visit often, we also have a few rare visitors. Last year, it was two arctic terns, en route their annual migration to South Africa. This year, about a month ago, I spotted a young sparrowhawk sitting on our fence. It was so young it was smaller than an adult pigeon - in fact I was a little skeptical that it was a bird of prey, given its diminutive size.

Today, as I was making my morning cup of tea, I heard a thud. A solid thud, as if a bird had flown into the backdoor head on at full speed. I rushed to the door and saw what seemed to have caused it: a sparrowhawk, at least 4 times the size the one I had seen the last time, and a starling. The sparrowhawk was standing on the starling, and the starling was on its back, squawking and wings flapping as hard as it could. I opened the door, making as much noise as I could in the hope it'd scare the predator away. The sparrowhawk was unfazed though. It literally just took one glance at me and turned its focus back to the struggling starling. In less than a second, it was airborne, its talons firmly gripping the still alive and struggling starling as it flew away, presumably to its nest or someplace private where it'd finish the job.

I shut the door and called Shruti. I think she heard the distress in my voice because her first response was to calm me down and reassure me it wasn't my fault. 

I sat down with my cup of tea, conscious of the silence that had now engulfed the garden. There were no birds to be seen or heard. I wondered if this incident would scare the birds away for a while. But that's not what happened. 

By the time I finished my cup of tea, the birds (starlings included) were back, and back to fighting over the food in the 6 bird feeders. 

I reminded myself, it's just the circle of life. 

Duracell Powercheck

Half an hour ago, my wireless keyboard stopped working. I tested the battery with the multimeter and it was down to 1 volt.

I tested all the AA batteries in my battery drawer to find the lowest battery over 1.2v that isn't in a pair (as my keyboard needs only one). I have a Duracell PowerCheck AA that registered 1.2V on my multimeter. When I noticed the PowerCheck, I decided to use the other battery as this Duracell was probably worth preserving. The only PowerCheck battery I remember ever coming across before this was in the 90s - and it was probably a discarded one as it only showed 1/3rd charge (and probably had even less, as this was in India, so much warmer than the rated 21°C)

And then, this video showed up on my youtube. Uploaded 7 days ago!

Duracell PowerCheck: A genius idea which didn't last that long

I looked at the Duracell, and it has a best before of March 2026! This really surprised me, as I haven't purchased any batteries recently (I have many rechargeable batteries just waiting to be used, and my current stock of alkaline batteries have all been purchased over 7 years ago!).

However, once I got to the end of the video, I decided to use the powercheck meter on the battery and it didn't show any reading at all. Testing it dropped the voltage displayed on the multimeter to 0.6v. Once I released the dots, the voltage dropped back up to 0.9v.

What are the odds that a famous youtuber uploads a video that I happen to see right when I test a battery with that exact feature, except that he was under the impression that those are long since out of production, while they clearly are not?! And his closing point of the video was why a multimeter might actually show a battery to have more "power" than it actually has than the powercheck meter does, when the one battery I happen to have on hand has that exact problem?

I am going to sleep mind-blown.