PITTSBURGH — Can't make it to Yellowstone Park this summer to see the geysers? No problem, geyser eruptions can be viewed comfortably from the couch on the web.

The National Park Service offers links to hundreds of online webcams to tune into landscapes and the animals inhabiting them, like brown bears catching salmon at Katmai National Park in Alaska.

Here in the Pittsburgh area, while we don't have Old Faithful or bears to watch, residents can choose from an increasing number of virtual windows showcasing the region's nesting raptors and other wildlife.

New webcams have recently featured scenes like red fox kits playing at their den at a farm in Westmoreland County, bats roosting in a barn in Hempfield and red-tailed hawk parents feeding their chick a snake at a nest nearby a bald eagle nest that already has its own webcam at the U.S. Steel Irvin Plant in West Mifflin.

Additionally, three downy peregrine falcon chickens were recently seen sleeping off a food coma in the sunshine atop the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning.

A nesting pair of peregrine falcons near the 36th floor of the building are the longest-reigning stars of live nature webcams in Pittsburgh.

The webcam, now sponsored by the National Aviary, has been streaming the Pitt aerie since 2003, a year after the formerly federally endangered falcons first took up residence.

This year, the peregrine couple, Carla and Ecco, doggedly care for their brood round the clock.

"People will see them grow up. Right now they are cute and white and fluffy," said Kate St. John of Oakland, author of the "Outside My Window" blog and a volunteer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission who has long monitored the region's peregrine falcons.

With live webcams, people can see bird family life up close. The peregrine parents fly in meals and strategically place tasty morsels in outstretched beaks.

"When people watch birds taking care of their young, they see how the parents nurture them — it's a commonality among many species including people," she said.

And it's a fast ride too. It takes only 40-45 days from a peregrine chick's hatching to its first flight.

The U.S. Steel Irvin Plant erected a second webcam on a red-tailed hawk nest to add to its bald eagle webcam in West Mifflin.

When plant manager Don German stands outside the mill, he sees a bald eagle nest on his right with a four-camera webcam system, then turns his head to view the red-tailed hawk on his left.

The hawk nest is a few hundred feet from the plant and about 500 feet from the bald eagle nest. The mill still had a camera and tripod used last year for the eagles and rushed to put up the webcam, German said.

He brought the mill's IT group and technicians to the site and tapped into the bald eagle webcam network. The nest began streaming live on April 24. Unfortunately, the spring leaf-out has limited the view, but the parents birds and chick are visible at certain angles.

Live nature is always a work in progress.

Adding another webcam adds to the steelmaker's community service, German said. The eagle webcam stream reaches at least 30 classrooms in the area.

"There are people who love red-tailed hawks. It's something different — different food sources and fledge times," he said.

German noted that the red-tailed hawk parents "shop at a different supermarket" than the eagles, bringing in snakes, squirrels and chipmunks to their young chick.

This year so far, the steel mill bald eagle webcam has attracted 2 million unique visitors, making it the most popular website for the region's most prolific wildlife webcam company, PixCams in Murrysville.

Bill Powers, owner of PixCams, has always wanted to stream a red-tailed hawk and is currently working with a team of Pitt students to monitor another red-tailed hawk nest on campus.

The Murrysville company adds new webcams each year and is now up to 57 streams including one showing a fox den with kits and another displaying roosting big brown bats in the barn of the Westmoreland Land Trust's Schwarz farm in Hempfield. A bluebird family in a nesting box with two chicks growing up fast is another popular webcam.

In years past, Powers had previously tried installing a webcam at a fox den, but the parents moved it.

They placed a camera two years ago in an undisclosed location in Westmoreland County and this year, the fox couple stayed with their six kits.

"They are used to the camera, so we are able to finally watch this activity that few people have been able to see," Powers said. "It took some work to get the video quality as good as it is, too."

The webcam captured the near fall of a kit early Tuesday morning after some rocks broke away near the den.

With the popularity of virtual nature, Powers has developed new webcam streaming products including PixLink, which uses the Starlink Mini satellite internet system to stream. He has an order in to install five of those systems at the Majete Wildlife Reserve in Malawi later this year.

He's also developed NestView for the public to watch wildlife.

For Kate Banaszak, a kindergarten teacher in the West Mifflin Area School District, nature webcams in the classroom are virtual field trips.

Since February, Banaszak has been streaming the U.S. Steel bald eagle nest on a classroom screen throughout the school day.

"The kids love it when one of the eagles brings in fish. They'll stop what they are doing and squeal 'There's a fish!' and the kids will ask questions," she said.

"It's been a good way to integrate science and the environment in everyday lives."