Archive for Scotch Bonnet
Colorful Juvenile Milk Conch On Sanibel
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As Jane and I walked all along West Gulf Drive after those cold (down to 37 degrees!) winds came through this past week, I heard her say “Whoa!” then bend down to pick up a shell. She found a JUVENILE MILK CONCH!
A MILK CONCH is very unusual to find here on Sanibel since it’s a caribbean shell.
Look how colorful it still is!
If you remember, Beach Girl Robyn found an adult MILK CONCH along the same beach in September and I said the same…. “Unusual”. Maybe I should say it’s a “rare” find here instead. To find it here, it’s way more rare than finding a JUNONIA! In any case, this 5 inch shell a fantastic find.
So then we keep walking and she’s about 5 paces ahead of me. I see her run and pick up something else in a hurry. She yells “Aha! A SCOTCH BONNET!”. What???
Yes, my buddy Jane also found a perfect SCOTCH BONNET right in front of me. I felt like I was walking with Clark for goodness sakes! Heehee. No, really….we were both ecstatic.
Note to self: Never let Jane walk in front of me while we are shelling together. Ha!
We also met SS Jenny (Shelling Sister) sifting through a sweet honey hole where she was finding oodles of FIGHTING CONCHS, WHELKS and OLIVES. She got out there before sunrise and used her iLS lighted cap she got for Christmas! Right after I took this picture she found two ALPHABET CONES in the same spot. Weehoo! She had no trouble finding the Sanibel Six many times over.
Congrats to Jane and Jenny on your seaside treasure trove!
Gotten, The Cabrits Of Our Lives
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It’s not easy to find a CABRIT’S MUREX on the beaches of Sanibel.. much less with some of the spines still in tact. So I was over the moon when Clark found this one near Bowman’s Beach. (Okay, hopefully not the Cabrits of our lives but I couldn’t resist the silly title play on words)
Joanne (NJ) was shelling in the same spot with me when Clark showed us this great find. So guess what she found the very next day? You guessed it! Her own CABRITS MUREX!!
They look to be just about the same size and color (Clark’s looks whiter but when it’s wet it looks just like her’s with a pinkish color) but hers has a few more spines still in tact. Crazy, huh?
Look at the other cool shells she found… a piece of LIONS PAW, 2 FLATS and a pink tinted ALTERNATE TELLIN with both sides still attached.
Then I ran into Joan (Indiana) who found a beautiful SCOTCH BONNET on her birthday!!!!
Look at that bright yellow SCALLOP too. Happy birthday, Joan!
The low tide mornings over the weekend brought in these unusual shells along with lots of the goodies.
Lizbeth found a handful of orangies. Look at that fabulous solid brilliant orange CHESTNUT TURBAN. It doesn’t look chestnut to me, you know?
I also found a wonderful treasure… Shelling Sistah Connie Knight in her i Love Shelling shirt!!!
And then Shelling Sistah Mary Ann Ross too! I was in hog heaven all weekend.
Here’s Benny from Miami finding those bright orange SCALLOPS too…
The weekend started off with gobs of rain and wind then finished with gorgeous skies. We shelled right through all of it and ended up with a treasure trove. You gotta roll with the tides, baby.
When The Seashells Come Rolling In
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The islands get happy. The strong winds and rain that belted the islands the past few days are paying off with seashells! The shells are rolling in and piling up all along the beaches of Captiva. The first person I saw this morning was Michelle from Toronto with her 2 huge LIGHTNING WHELKS…
Look at this huge ALPHABET CONE and KING’S CROWN in her shell jug….
Then I heard a “Woohoo!” from somebody. It was Lois from PA …
with a perfectly beautiful SCOTCH BONNET in her hand…
Okay, this is really cool. Get this….She told me she has been shelling for 40 years and that she has kept a life list of shells she has found. She has 347 different types of shells on her life list. You hear that yall? You can start counting your shell finds to have a shell life list of your own if you want.
Charity from Ohio was finding lots of WHELKS…
Get a load of this big honkin chunk-a CORAL she found too…
Joyce from Long Island, NY shows us her FLORIDA CONE and big shell bag filled with goodies.
Look at Loretta from Texas with her great piece of WORM ROCK (and her cutie iLoveShelling hat!!!) …
photo by Diana Taylor
I saw great shells along every stretch of beach on Captiva today and heard that someone found a nice size LION’S PAW right in front of Captiva Island Yacht Club. I also heard the Sanibel was rocking too!
I haven’t even gone through all of my photos or much less taken photos of my own finds from today but I will hopefully get to that tomorrow….if I’m not too busy finding new treasures! Enjoy the shelling whether you are on the coast or doing a little fun cybershelling.
Yee Haw, A Lion’s Paw!
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As soon as I saw this huge LION’S PAW, I wanted to grab it and run down the beach. Unfortunately for me, I had to remain calm and admire it in the hands of the guy who found it… Bob from California.
He couldn’t believe his luck when he found it on a sand bar off West Gulf Drive this morning. He pointed out the nodules were broken off but then we all said “who cares!”. That’s a fantastic find.
Congrats, Bob!
I also saw local sheller Liz with some killer finds of her own… a FLORIDA CONE, TRUE TULIP, FLAT SCALLOP and a perfect SCOTCH BONNET with great color.
I think the cooler weather was bringing lots of the locals to the beach this weekend. We saw our friend Jean collecting COCKLE shells to line a walking path in her yard. Good idea!
Shelling guide Louise Alt from Waterwoman Adventures was shelling with her trusty first mate Darla. I always love to run into Louise!
Jane was shelling off East Gulf Drive for black SCALLOPS to make a frame for her husband John’s picture…
Darlene (Pine Island) found this 7 inch LIGHTNING WHELK on the sand bar at Blind Pass…
Barbara from Long Island, NY had just gotten started shelling for the day and found a nice SHARKS EYE…
April from PA loves the WORM ROCK like I do…
Yep, I can say “Yee Haw!” for Bob and all of the other successful shellers this weekend. There were some mighty good seashells out there for the pickin’. 
The Freaks Are Out On Sanibel!
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I was welcomed home from my Virginia Beach visit to Sanibel by a bunch of FREAKS!! Shell freaks, that is. And I’m not even saying that we are a bunch of shell freaks (errr, although I guess we are). What I’m talking about are seashells that have odd growth patterns or defects that cause them to have weird shapes or colors that aren’t typical for the species. Look at this one….
Freak Scotch Bonnet
This is the SCOTCH BONNET Clark found last weekend that he didn’t really mention all that much because he was so busy ribbing me about his JUNONIA – heehee. I saw this one in his picture and I thought it looked a little funny so I couldn’t wait to get my paws on it. Oooooh… So Cool! Do you see anything strange about this shell?
Freak Scotch Bonnet second lip
Now do you see it? It’s got a second “lip” where it doesn’t belong! Otherwise it is in fantastic shape! Here’s a look again at the SCOTCH BONNET I found in January along with the FREAK….
Freak difference
There is a category at the Sanibel Shell Fair and Show for “Unusual Variants- Albinos, Freaks, etc”. I think Clark should enter this one!!! It’s a Super Freak by Super Sheller Clark!
Apex of scotch bonnet with freak
Clark had sent a photo of this next FIGHTING CONCH FREAK he found on the same day but the photo was so blurry, I couldn’t really tell what it was, much less post it.
freak fighting conch
Yep! This is a juvenile FIGHTING CONCH that maybe thought he was a COWRIE.
freak fighting conch apex
Is that wild, or what! Here’s a side by side picture of another “regular” FIGHTING CONCH with this FREAK FIGHTING CONCH.
freak difference in conch shells
This next picture of an APPLE MUREX isn’t what I’d call a real FREAK but the coloring is so cool that it gives an optical illusion. This shell was in Clark’s photo in A Plate Stuffed With Shells and Cheri had commented that “It looks like a cross between a murex (texture) and a fighting conch (color)!!“. It does! It’s just the coloring (it doesn’t show it as much as the original photo) so I’d say this one was a just little “freakish”.
Freakish apple murex
PS- I couldn’t help but imagine those freaks in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video when I wrote the headline “The Freaks Come Out On Sanibel”. Ha! So I googled the song and saw that top photo and laughed when I thought of them all holding freak shells. I never put anybody else’s photos on my blog without asking permission from the photographer and giving them credit. Well, I didn’t get permission for this photo because of the time restraints so I hope it’s okay with the photographer Andy Clark. It’s a great photo but I just had to embellish it just a tad with my own FREAKS.
PSS- Mom seems be doing okay! Thank you again for all of you good wishes- it’s working!
My Family Visits The Island
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It couldn’t have been a more perfect weekend. The sun was shining, temps in the 80s, low humidity, shells in the surf….. and the very best part….. my family came to visit!!!
Greg and Tee!
My brother and I grew up spending our summers on the beach at Sandbridge in Virginia Beach and vacationing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The beach is in our blood so it’s a good thing we both found spouses that have that sand running through their blood too. My sister-in-law (the best a sister could ask for!) is all about the beach too so the first thing after the whole gang got here ….. we hit the beach.
Becky finding minis
Our friend Becky (and part of the family) was the first one to find out how glorious the miniature shell finds can be.
She found oodles of WENTLETRAPS, BUTTONS and BUBBLES scattered all along the Lighthouse beach on Saturday.
Clark and Greg in the shelling zone scooping up the mini shells.
This was exactly how one pile from their scooper looked after Clark or Greg dumped it on the beach for us to sift through. Go ahead, click on the photo above for some virtual shelling! How many WENTLETRAPS did you find?
My cutie niece Kelly spying some seashells too. I miss her already.
This was a mixed bag of minis after getting rinsed at home . Click on that photo too- you’ll love this virtual shelling too!
On Sunday we started the day on the Captiva side at Blind Pass and Becky was thrilled with sittin’ and siftin’ in the shell pile by the jetty.
Looky what I found! Dang! It’s not a whole JUNONIA but I’ll take it. This was good but it wasn’t even the best “part” of a shell found. Look what Clark found…..
A piece of a DEER COWRIE! This seashell isn’t even native to our area but last week I showed another piece that Donnie found on my post last week and a whole one February 15.
We walked over the bridge to the Sanibel side of Blind Pass and saw lots of new shells washing up. I can’t believe what Clark plucked out of the water near the pilings of the bridge….
A SCOTCH BONNET! The man is a Super Sheller!
Okay, it was cracked on the other side ….but still! Since I found part of a JUNONIA too, all we needed to complete the Elite Three was to find a LION”S PAW. Would the DEER COWRIE count? 
He also found this ALTERNATE TELLIN and …
This beautiful SUNRAY VENUS.
Greg tried two scoops of seashells to better his chances. LOL
Tee’s in the shelling zone too.
Becky and her daughter (and Kelly’s best friend) Maddy. Do they still say “BFF”…or was so last year?
There were plenty of COCKLES, FIGHTING CONCHS, WHELKS, MUREXES and DOSINIAS along with so many other shells to take home with them. Shelling Success for the family!
