Wildcat Birding: The Tube Strikes Again!

It's shorebird season, so the best place to find shorebirds is the Geotube on Grass Lake, so my trusty compadre and rowing partner, as well as my awesome wife, Michelle, and I headed out around 6:30am to the tube. Great weather and calm water as usual, though the boat traffic was unusually heavy for the time of day. It took us about 15 min. to row out to the island where we saw that the water levels were definitely much higher than before the rains. Some mudflat still was present, though, so I was thinking some shorebirds would still be there. There were SOME but compared to last week it was slim pickins. 12 SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHERS methodically probed the mud while 4 STILT SANDPIPERS did the same in a different area to the NE. There were 3 SPOTTED SANDPIPERS on the rocks. Other than those, there were none. Slightly disappointing to say the least. I've noticed that since the rains have come, the number of shorebirds, despite good habitat, has decreased.
So, since the action was minimal, we headed back around the island and headed toward the dock. Now, as we were watching for shorebirds earlier, I had said to my wife, "we need to check the trees around the island also because now is a good time for some wandering herons to show up." Fortunately, she was listening, because I failed to take my own advice, and as we headed around the island I was focused on rowing and paid no notice to the shoreline of the island. The south end of the island is heavily vegetated and has a nice little moat perfect for herons. As we neared this area, Michelle said, "Hey, what's that bird? It looks too small to be a Great Blue Heron." I glanced over, saw the bird, and nearly pooped my pants when I saw a gorgeous YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON staring right at me! Being the spaz that I am, I quickly fumbled with my camera to get a pic, and, in so doing, freaked the bird and it flew over the trees and out of sight before I could snap a pic. Unbelievable! Yet another county lifer for me! A truly great bird for Lake County, and one that I would never have guessed that I would see this year.