Cheers to bird watchers, environmentalists and American patriots. The eaglets have hatched.

After an absence of more than 200 years, bald eagles are back and nesting in Pittsburgh. A pair is nesting for a second year on a steep bluff above the Monongahela River in Hays, near Pittsburgh's Southside.

Thanks to a web cam posted near the eagles' nest, thousands of people around the world have been able to watch as three eaglets hatched, each a few days apart with the final one emerging from its eggshell on Thursday.

The eaglets face an uphill battle for survival, particularly the one that hatched last, since its siblings have a few days' head start and nature tends to favor the first-hatched. But for the moment, all three hatchlings appear healthy and well cared-for by attentive parents; in fact, the mother already fended off a raccoon that attempted to pilfer her eggs.

The web cam, provided by PixController and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, is the first and only web cam documenting an eagle nest in Pennsylvania. The web cam is linked to the Butler Eagle's home page, www.butlereagle.com.

From the beginning of this year, motorists in Pennsylvania have been paying a little more in taxes at the pump. Now a large chunk of that money is coming home.Thanks to the new transportation tax, four roads in Butler County will receive an extra $11.6 million worth of improvements this year. The funding is part of $2.1 billion in statewide highway and bridge projects announced Thursday by Gov. Tom Corbett and the state Department of Transportation.That figure is $600 million more than what would have been spent without Act 89, which raised a gas tax and a number of vehicle and driving licensing fees.The new road projects are:A 3.5-mille stretch of Route 228 from Saxonburg Boulevard to Route 356 in Clinton and Buffalo townships. Derry Construction Co. of Latrobe will do patching, drainage, and resurfacing work for about $3 million. Work is about to begin and should be done by September.A 3.6-mile stretch of Route 422 from Route 528 to the Mt. Chestnut Bridge in Franklin Township. Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc. received a contract for an estimated $2.7 million for work to be done by August.Route 356 from Green Manor Drive to Route 8 in Summit and Butler townships also will be repaved. Repairs on the 3.9 mile stretch of road is expected to cost about $1.8 million.An estimated $4.1 million will go to repaving 3.4 miles of Yellow Creek Road in Lancaster Township.

Call it the strange case of Dragging Miss Daisy.Some prankster took the vandal’s art of mailbox bashing to a new low early Sunday morning by stealing Sumner McDaniel’s mailbox holder — his 11-foot-tall, nearly 1,500-pound gorilla sculpture made of steel. Yes, Daisy is the name of the alloyed ape, although “miss” would be a misnomer, since McDaniel refers to Daisy as “he”.Suspects stole the artwork between 1 and 3 a.m. It’s likely they chained it to their vehicle and pulled it down, just like that big Saddam statue in the park in Baghdad.“They took him on a tour of Renfrew,” McDaniel said. “I’m sure it was exciting for him. He got to see the post office and the old school house.”Daisy turned up Sunday afternoon on Creek Road, more than a mile away, a bit banged up but still in one piece. It sounds as though the road surface was more banged up than Daisy.The sculpture has been put in storage — in hiding, McDaniel says — while he arranges repairs and ponders what to do next with it.Bill Secunda, who created Daisy a few years ago, hopes he can fix his battered creation. He says he’ll likely make the sculpture bigger and heavier.There is a $500 reward being offered for anyone with information leading to the conviction of the offender.The only question is what charges apply.Criminal mischief? Certainly.Theft and burglary? Probably.Poaching? We’ll see.