A RUFF week or so

I've been a bit delinquent on posting lately, sorry about that. It's partially due to the fact that I've been out enjoying migration every chance I get outside of work (like this Ruff that showed up only 25 minutes from where I live on the 4th - only my second ABA twitch of the species). I've tacked on quite a few nice birds this past week, the highlight definitely being a Black-bellied Plover that I picked up moving over right as a cold front hit at dawn... It would have gone down as plover sp. if my good old pluvialis whistle (that I picked up as a trick to get the flyby shorebirds to put down on "my" jetty in front of the seawatch) hadn't worked again and got the bird to fly closer and whistle a call of its own! Other pickups include the more expected migrants: Orange-crowned Warbler, American Redstart, Northern Waterthrush, Veery, another flyover Orchard Oriole at dawn. Flocks of Eastern Kingbirds going over at first light, Least Flycatcher.
Can't wait until this storm system clears out as we're due for another huge push. And the leaderboard makes it look deceptively like this actually is a competition! Once I start field work in IN next week my ability to check the yard each morning will be even more diminished so Putnut should finally stop being my shadow.