Bird spotting

We have noticed a couple of unusual birds in the neighborhood recently. Not unusual birds, they are common, but I have never seen them in the neighborhood, They are the type I see in fields and along the highways out of the city.

First there was a vulture, probably a turkey vulture, seen during the day a few weeks ago just across the bridge, along Queen's Way.

Today we saw some sort of hawk or falcon, possibly a Sharp-shinned Hawk or Cooper's Hawk, based on a quick glance and studying the bird book. I'm not too good at bird identification -- you have to know to look at colors, striping, sizes but it seems there is always some key point I didn't notice! I'm sure practice would really help. Here is a link to the North Central Texas Birds website.

Anyway, it is interesting to see these birds out of their usual settings.

Halloween earthquakes!

Just after midnight on October 31, 2008, Bedford experienced a 3.0 earthquake. Epicenter was 4 miles SW of Irving.

According to the KXAS-TV MSNBC reports "The first quake occurred at 11:25 p.m. and was a magnitude 2.5 centered 4 miles north of Grand Prairie. The second and largest quake occurred at 12:01 a.m. According to the USGS the epicenter of the 3.0 magnitude quake was 4 miles southwest of Irving. Jessica Sigala with the USGS reports there were several smaller quakes in the magnitude 2.0 range and the last quake was felt around 3:00 a.m."

Later in the day, around 4pm, two more quakes were reported, according to WFAA. Their article includes a map of the locations.