There’s nothing quite as interesting as watching the neighbours.

On June 30, I introduced the IQ-challenged robin that performed multiple face plants on our living room window before building a nest (What’s that racket?). Oddly it abandoned the nest and left behind a broken egg and a whole one. Mysteriously the whole nest disappeared when we were away.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed more nest building in a tree less than three feet from the same window. This time the robin made no crash attempts even though the nest was much closer to the window. It might be racist but I’ll say it’s the same one since robins of similar weight all look alike.

The robin went through the same boring, sit-on-the eggs routine but this time two hungry kids showed up. This spurred my dream of taking the classic photo of a robin delicately dropping a worm into an outstretched baby beak. It’s not going to happen.

Whenever it’s feeding time, the robin lands on the nest directly in front of me so I get this lovely view of butt feathers with glimpses of kids between her legs. The other angles are all blocked by trees.

Another photography challenge is that the nest is snuggled into a particularly dark corner with occasional blasts of harsh sunlight sneaking through branches. In keeping with my persistent nature, I gave up and focused on the kids.

Unlike humans, I’m guessing the parents think these kids are cute even though they are pretty ugly. They are also a lot of work. The parents are high on home delivery so they make multiple trips each hour with bite-size morsels. The kids are quick to start waving their oversized open beaks whenever they hear incoming wings. No fussy kids in this batch, they swallow whatever drops.

I have to laugh when other birds in the area create false alarms. The kids pop up expecting food but get nothing. They don’t seem fussed, just drop back to sleep ready to pop up on short notice.

So that leaves us with responsible parents, non-fussy kids that sleep, eat and never whine … perhaps these neighbours aren’t that interesting after all. They’re an impossible standard to replicate!

Click the first photo below to enlarge photos and captions in a larger gallery.

The kids popped out of their nest in their best synchronized begging routine. I was pleasantly surprised that they went high enough to intersect a shaft of sunlight, bathing their beaks in light.

Sometimes they slept with their eyes closed.

Sometimes they slept with their eyes open.

Sometimes they rested at the edge of the nest.

And sometimes they placed an open beak strategically over a sibling to try to get extra lunch.