They say a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, in this case it's not true. Here is a photo of a Purple Finch ( female )at the end of her life cycle, she died moments after this photo was taken. I have many species of birds living here on my mountain top. This is the first one that I saw that met it's end. I believe it was old age even though the temperate has reached 110 on a few days this summer. I provide food, shelter and water for any birds that remain here and thats why they stay. My homemede feeder is mounted on a large Pine tree, I trunk,  I have also added a few Cedar branches for them to rest on. Theres a lot of competition going on at the feeder. The Blue jays are the dominant ones at the feeder, but sometimes they will fill their cheeks with seeds and eat them elsewhere. There is very little fighting going on at the main feeder. Not so at the Humming bird feeder, theres always chasing & fighting going on , they are the hardest to photograph.I have many photos of birds that I have photographed this year which I will be uploading in time. Most of my photos are taken with a Sony Cybershot Dsc-H1, WITH 5.1 megapixel and 12X optical zoom. Very few are modified except for croping or zooming on computer as my photos are taken from a distance of from 3 ft. to 1 mile away, none of my shots are Macro, I use the computer to also zoom in on the best part. I have also got some surprises,  things not seen with the naked eye when I took some photos. I have a Yahoo 360 page with about 42 albums there to view and I am starting to transfer some of them to here. I just started doing photography daily for the past 3 years. Hope you all enjoy my photos..