A cemetery is usually a place we associate with the end of life, not the beginning of it, but a Pennsylvania cemetery has flipped that script entirely with a sweet 2-minute video.

The Historic Easton Cemetery in the small town of Easton, Pennsylvania, has built a huge fan base with its viral footage of two bluebirds building a nest and raising a family over the course a month and a half. The cemetery shared that it had installed a birdhouse equipped with a solar-powered camera in the spring, and soon a bluebird couple showed up to check it out.

Clearly deciding that the house had good bones, the couple began building a nest, bringing in twigs and arranging them in a circular pattern, with the female creating a round spot to lay her eggs. On Day 13, she laid her first egg, then another, then another and another. On Day 30, the eggs began to hatch, and for the next couple of weeks we see the mom and dad take turns bringing the babies food.

It's so simple, yet completely engaging to see the nesting cycle in its entirety—48 days edited down to just a few minutes. Watch:

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The reel cut off due to time, so the cemetery posted the Part 2 video showing the fledglings leaving the nest as well:

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The birdhouse was the brainchild of Mike Pearsall, whose grandmother loved bluebirds and had birdhouses. She's buried in Historic Easton Cemetery and he built the camera-enabled birdhouse in her honor. He told WFMZ that he assumed sparrows would primarily use it, so he was thrilled when the bluebird pair showed up and claimed the house first.

Bluebirds tend to mate for life, which makes seeing this pair setting up house and caring for their babies extra special. The first day, it's almost as if they were genuinely house hunting—you could almost hear the, "What do you think, hon? Should we get it?" And then to see them working together to build their nest and feed their young was truly heartwarming.

People found the videos delightfully riveting.

"Thank you for sharing. This is heart happiness right here! 🩵💙"

"I didn't realize how fast the eggs hatch! Neat :) Beautiful birds."

"How sweet they work together 💙💙"

"Thank you for your beautiful reel… made me smile. I feed my cardinals and jays everyday. Never thought to do anything like this."

"It’s just amazing how animals/birds instinctively know how to care for their babies."

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"I never knew they laid 1 egg each consecutive day like that… idk why but I thought it would be an all at once scenario??"

"I love that new life is being born in a cemetery."

There's a reason birdwatching is a thing. Humans have always found birds intriguing (they can FLY, for the love), but when the birdwatching bug gets you it can take you by surprise.

The world saw a big birdwatching boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, when social distancing gave us the time and the desire for such outdoor activity. People who always wondered how "watching birds" could possibly be considered a hobby found out why people who do it love it so much. In fact, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 35% of Americans age 16 and older now identify as birdwatchers.

#springmigration2023 #wbupalospark #birdnerd

But you don't even have to be an avid birder to appreciate seeing the natural cycle of a bird family. Bird's nests are usually built where it's hard for humans to see them, and even if we can, none of us have the time to sit and watch for a month and a half to see how the nest gets built, the eggs get hatched and the babies get taken care of.

Stationary cameras like the one in the top of the birdhouse allow us to observe bird behavior without disturbing their habitat. Similar cameras are sometimes set up near hawk or eagle nests to help facilitate wildlife research and conservation as well as to educate the public. The more connection we have with nature, the more we understand the importance of protecting the environment and the more responsibility we tend to take to care for the Earth. Connection with nature might look like hiking through the woods, getting to know the squirrels in your backyard or witnessing the nesting cycle of bluebirds at a cemetery in Pennsylvania, but it all leads to the same place—an appreciation of the beauty and wonder of the natural world and an urge to see it thrive.

You can follow Historic Easton Cemetery on Instagram.

“Blink,” a new film by National Geographic Documentary Films shows how a family with four children, three of whom are going blind, embraces life in the face of an uncertain future. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Lemay-Pelletier family but also a reminder for all of us to seize the day because all our futures are uncertain.

Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier are the parents of Mia, a 13-year-old girl, and three boys: Léo, 11, Colin, 9, and Laurent, 7. Over the last six years, they’ve learned that Mia and the two youngest boys have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease in which the cells of the retina slowly die. As the disease progresses, the person develops “tunnel vision” that shrinks until very little vision remains.

The diagnosis devastated the parents. "The hardest part with the diagnosis was inaction. There's nothing they can do about it. There's no treatment,” Edith says in the film.

However, even though the parents couldn’t affect the progress of the disease, they could give their children’s senses an epic experience that would benefit them for a lifetime.

“We don’t know how fast it’s going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life,” said the parents. Mia’s impairment advisor suggested they fill her visual memory with pictures from books. “I thought, I’m not going to show her an elephant in a book; I’m going to take her to see a real elephant,” Edith explains in the film. “And I’m going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can.”

The Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sebastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Leo inKuujjuaq, Canada.via National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky

This realization led to an inspiring year-long journey across 24 countries, during which every family member experienced something on their bucket list. Mia swam with dolphins, Edith rode a hot-air balloon in Cappadocia, and Léo saw elephants on safari.

Colin realized his dream of sleeping on a moving train while Sébastien saw the historic site of Angkor Wat.

“We were focusing on sights,” explains Pelletier. “We were also focusing a lot on fauna and flora. We’ve seen incredible animals in Africa but also elsewhere. So we were really trying to make them see things that they wouldn’t have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences.”

Cameras followed the family for 76 days as they traveled to far-flung locales, including Namibia, Mongolia, Egypt, Laos, Nepal and Turkey. Along the way, the family made friends with local people and wildlife. In a heartbreaking scene, the boys wept as the family had to leave behind a dog named Bella he befriended in the mountains of Nepal.

But the film isn't just about the wonders of nature and family camaraderie. The family's trip becomes a “nightmare” when they are trapped in a cable car suspended hundreds of feet above the Ecuadorian forest for over 10 hours.

Leo, Laurent, Edith, Colin, Mia, and Sebastien look out at the mountains in the Annapurna range.via MRC/Jean-Sébastien Francoeur

As expected, NatGeo’s cinematographers beautifully capture the family's journey, and in the case of “Blink,” this majestic vision is of even greater importance. In some of the film's quietest moments, we see the children taking in the world's wonders, from the vast White Desert in Egypt to a fearless butterfly in Nepal, with the full knowledge that their sight will fail one day.

Along the way, the family took as many pictures as possible to reinforce the memories they made on their adventure. “Maybe they’ll be able to look at the photographs and the pictures and they will bring back those stories, those memories, of the family together,” Edith says.

But the film is about more than travel adventures and the pain of grief; ultimately, it’s about family.

“By balancing [the parents’ grief] with a more innocent and joyous tale of childlike wonder and discovery, we felt we could go beyond a mere catalog of locations and capture something universal,” the directors Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher, said in a statement. “Keeping our camera at kid-height and intimately close to the family, we aimed to immerse the audience in the observational realities of their daily life, as well as the subtle relationships between each of them. This is a film built on looks, gestures and tiny details—the very fabric of our relationships with one another.”

Ultimately, “Blink” is a great film to see with your loved ones because it’s a beautiful reminder to appreciate the wonders of our world, the gift of our senses and the beauty of family.

The film will open in over 150 theaters in the U.S. and Canada beginning Oct. 4 and will debut on National Geographic Channel and stream on Disney and Hulu later this year. Visit the “Blink” website for more information.

Actor Mark Wahlberg recently attended a daddy-daughter dance with his 10-year-old, Grace. Sadly, Grace had no interest in seeing her father strutting his stuff on the dance floor.

"I didn't get one dance," Wahlberg told Ellen........

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