Often the parents bring in quite large bugs and the babies are not yet able to swallow them. In the video below you see the father feeding a big bug to one of the chicks (0:23) and then he observes if the food goes down well. When the baby has almost completely swallowed it, the father decides to pull it out of his throat again! (0:42) Then he tries to feed it to some other chicks. At 1:14 another chick tries to swallow it but then the mother pulls it out of his throat (1:23). She gives the food back to the male and he leaves the birdbox with it.
This happens very often and I still haven't figured out what the bird does outside the box with chunks of food that are too big. Often I see them coming back a short time later with what appears to be the same bug! However, usually they end up eating the bug themselves.
Trying to eat large bug, 30 April 2014 7:11pm
At 8:00am this morning, there are 9 chicks in the nest and 3 more eggs to go. It's been about 48 hours now since the first chick hatched.
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