Hoopoe
Well I may have jinxed things by saying that the Hoopoe in Collingham has been present for nearly a fortnight as it appears to have flown off overnight. One of the reasons I returned was because I wanted a decent photograph of it playing catch with a grub, in decent light. I know lots of other people have uploaded images of it tossing a Crane-fly larva into the air but here is my best effort. Crane-fly larvae (aka leatherjackets) feed on the roots of plants, especially grasses, and the absence of legs identifies it from any similar moth caterpillars or sawfly larvae. This Hoopoe would immerse the entire length of its bill into the soil and poke around intently, usually emerging with a leatherjacket in the tip of its bill. You then had to judge when it was likely to toss the grub into the air and be ready with the shutter. Each time it did this you could hear the machine-gun fire of dozens of cameras firing simultaneously. By good luck I managed to take many photographs of it with a grub in the air. I was never any good at catching things in my mouth yet this Hoopoe did it all the time. But if you think about it this is the only way it can get a morsel from its bill tip into its gullet. If I had, say, a peanut in my lips, I could manoeuvre my lips until the peanut was on my tongue, which would then manoeuvre it to my teeth to be chewed and swallowed. But birds' mouths are very different. This Hoopoe was picking up leatherjackets by the very tip of its forceps-like bill. But it doesn't have lips to manoeuvre it backwards, and its tongue is hard and far less flexible than ours. So the easiest way to get the leatherjacket from bill tip to gullet is to toss it in the air and catch it. It doesn't have teeth to chew its food, so maceration of food takes place in its gizzard ( a muscular organ near the start of the digestive tract). Birds that eat hard food like seeds eat grit which they retain in their gizzard to help grind up the food.
Hoopoe
Well I may have jinxed things by saying that the Hoopoe in Collingham has been present for nearly a fortnight as it appears to have flown off overnight. One of the reasons I returned was because I wanted a decent photograph of it playing catch with a grub, in decent light. I know lots of other people have uploaded images of it tossing a Crane-fly larva into the air but here is my best effort. Crane-fly larvae (aka leatherjackets) feed on the roots of plants, especially grasses, and the absence of legs identifies it from any similar moth caterpillars or sawfly larvae. This Hoopoe would immerse the entire length of its bill into the soil and poke around intently, usually emerging with a leatherjacket in the tip of its bill. You then had to judge when it was likely to toss the grub into the air and be ready with the shutter. Each time it did this you could hear the machine-gun fire of dozens of cameras firing simultaneously. By good luck I managed to take many photographs of it with a grub in the air. I was never any good at catching things in my mouth yet this Hoopoe did it all the time. But if you think about it this is the only way it can get a morsel from its bill tip into its gullet. If I had, say, a peanut in my lips, I could manoeuvre my lips until the peanut was on my tongue, which would then manoeuvre it to my teeth to be chewed and swallowed. But birds' mouths are very different. This Hoopoe was picking up leatherjackets by the very tip of its forceps-like bill. But it doesn't have lips to manoeuvre it backwards, and its tongue is hard and far less flexible than ours. So the easiest way to get the leatherjacket from bill tip to gullet is to toss it in the air and catch it. It doesn't have teeth to chew its food, so maceration of food takes place in its gizzard ( a muscular organ near the start of the digestive tract). Birds that eat hard food like seeds eat grit which they retain in their gizzard to help grind up the food.