Seashell and beach bling wishes

Remember last summer’s Time For An Island vacation giveaway for four people to stay on Sanibel? Well meet the lucky winners Shawna, Jennifer, Ashleigh and Dotti enjoying their time on the beach!

Shawna, Jennifer, Ashleigh and Dotti enjoy shells identification

They each placed a shell on a Sanibel Shell Tree to hopefully make even more wishes come true…

Wishing on a Sanibel shell tree

They also found some of those beautiful and colorful CALICO SCALLOPS similar to the ones I collected from my last post.

scallop shell tie die

The whole island has been a little sleepy when it comes to finding huge new shell piles in the past week but of course these lucky gals had a great attitude. Along with CALICO SCALLOPS, they were collecting lots of the KITTEN PAWS, COCKLES, AUGERS and JINGLES…

Common Sanibel kittens paws and calico scallops

“Y” not enjoy the common shells? There are thousands of them to sift through!

Letter Y shell

In the highest wrack line, there were still lots of dried HORSE CONCH EGG CASINGS as well as this LIGHTNING WHELK EGG CASING that still has some of the itty bitty dried WHELK shells in some of the capsules.

lightning whelk egg case with dried shells

So cute! They look just like this…

juvenile whelks from case

As I walked off the beach, I turned back towards the beach to see how pretty the BEACH DAISIES were against the path with the backdrop of the water and sky… so stunning. And Oh! There’s Shawna shelling in the dunes. Whatcha doing?

collecting shells in the dunes

She came racing over to show us all the shells she found just off the path. She found lots of CUBAN LAND SNAILS (Zachrysia provisory). They are Sanibel’s most common land snail. But… Since I forgot the name of this snail, I looked it up in a great local book Living Sanibel: A Nature Guide to Sanibel & Captiva Islands which is normally a great guide for things like this on Sanibel but they called it the COMMON LAND SNAIL (Helix pomatia) … that’s incorrect (those are European shells- oops!). So thanks to Steve R and Susan H who corrected the identification through comments, we now know these shells that Shawna found are CUBAN LAND SNAILS.  I should have known everything about this snail since I have tons of them in my garden after a rain- they come out of no where! Anyhooo, they are really pretty when they get cleaned up in a very deluted bleach water bath.

Sanibel Common Land Snail Helix pomatia

Then they all said “There are shells everywhere here! We even found them in the flower beds and the parking lot”. They had cups filled with FOSSIL SHELLS probably from the FOSSIL pits up near Sarasota.

fossil shells in a Sanibel cup

And they collected more FOSSIL shells. i Love these girls!

fossil shells in Sanibel parking lots

In the past week since returning from our shelling trip to  Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the weather has been hot and still without loads of shells on any of the beaches I have been. The good news is, we have had western winds the last 2 days so there are a few more waves to churn up some of those shells that have been out in the water… and hopeful bring them up to the shore soon.

sit n sift finding shells

There are always shells on our beaches on Sanibel but Mother Nature has control of which ones she wants to throw up on the beach for her to share. I don’t know what Shawna, Jennifer, Ashleigh and Dotti wished for on the Shell Tree, but my wish on the Shell Tree was to never take our shell strewn beaches for granted so that I can’t see the beauty in each and every one of the treasures that wash up on our shores.

Just married Sanibel seashell wish