English Translation
The bird picked up the worm.
“The bird pecked at the worm.” possibly a better translation.
“etwas aufpicken” does in fact mean “to pick something up” according to dict.cc: dict.cc | aufpicken | English Dictionary
But “auf etwas zu picken” seems to mean “to peck at something” according to deepl: DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator
So this might be one of those times where it’s really hard to tell if a sentence is using “auf” as a preposition or as a separable verb prefix.
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The difference would be word order:
Der Vogel pickte den Wurm auf. - separable verb
Der Vogel pickte auf den Wurm. - preposition
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