juvenile junonia baby

 How can you not feel jubilant after seeing this teeny tiny juvenile JUNONIA? I can only imagine jubilance Jean felt when she found it.

tiny junonia in ark on pen shell

Over the weekend, I met Jean (Vermont) doing the Sit ‘n Sift on the huge shell pile at Blind Pass and she told me about a really purple FIGHTING CONCH she found earlier in the week. Before I knew it, she had gone to her cottage across the street to get that purple shell plus a few others. These are three gorgeous color variations of FIGHTING CONCHS  she had brought back to the beach to show me.

fighting conch variations

Unfortunatley, you can’t really see just how purple the left CONCH is from this photo but maybe it’s because that orange is so vibrant in the middle one but trust me, it is really much more violet in person.

fighting conch color variations aperture

So after I took pictures of these CONCHS, she brought out another bag with this exquisite treasure that just about knocked me out of my flip flops…

juvenile junonia in ark

Jean brought this cutie little JUNONIA back to the island to show a friend what she had found several years ago at Blind Pass Captiva. I’m so glad she did so we would get to see it too!

juvi junonia captiva

 I asked her if she had seen the exhibit at the 2012 Sanibel Shell Show of the juvenile JUNONIAS that Weezie Sachs won a Red Ribbon for. She had seen it too!

juvenile junonias shell show sanibel

The one she found is even smaller than both of those. Of course since we were on the beach, I didn’t have a coin to show a size comparison but you can see just how small this treasure is by looking at it next to her rings on her finger. Amazing! It’s so sweet and tiny!

size small juvenile junonia

It’s my new fave mini I’ve ever seen. Thank you so much for sharing your shells with us, Jean!

best miniature shell

PS- I have to give a BIG shout out to Yvonne Greer! I would have missed this big shell pile at Blind Pass if it wasn’t for her contacting me to spread the shelling news. I hadn’t had a chance to get down to Blind Pass to check on the shells on my own so thank you Yvonne! We would have missed this baby JUNONIA and all the other goodies on my last post.