Archive for Tellin
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.
Constricted Shelling Seems Like An Oxymoron
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When I am shelling on the beach, the rest of the world melts away. My breathing gets easier because my body loosens up and my whole outlook widens. To think of anything that is constricted about shelling seems like an oxymoron to me. Constricting and shelling are contradictory words! That’s why I was surprised to find this CONSTRICTED MACOMA mixed in with oodles of ALTERNATE TELLINS around West Gulf Dr.
This one looked so different because it looked like the sun melted one side of it. I couldn’t find a match in any of my books to identify it but MurexKen assures me it is the CONSTRICTED MACOMA. I wonder what it is so constricted about? I would have called it the MELTED MACOMA or MELTY TELLIN… but who asked me, right?
Quit constricting, MACOMA!
Relax like some of your other relatives, the ALTERNATE TELLINS…
…and like some of my buddies when we get together to enjoy just hanging out on the beach and shelling…
Nancy, Sarah, Jodi, Toni, Di, Ellen and Me
Toni had a theme going… KITTEN’S PAWS in a kitten’s paw bag.
This Weekend Rocked
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My friend Diane joined Clark and me on the beach off West Gulf Drive yesterday for a lovely afternoon of shell seeking. We wanted to find a big WHELK like last week but she was just as happy with a candy HORSIE CONCH.
She was even happier to find 9 BABY’S EARS…
Then to top it all off she framed her Sanibel Six in a very creative MANGROVE SEED POD picture frame.
I met another blog buddy Candice from St Pete! She saw Clark with his shelling backhoe and asked him “Are you Clark?” LOL
She said she wasn’t finding much, so I walked with her just for a few minutes and we found a few goodies… 3 ALTERNATE TELLINS, a PURPLISH TAGELUS, COQUINA, FALSE ANGEL WING, 2 CONCHS, a LACE MUREX, a TURBAN and a beautiful BABY’S EAR.
All of Candice’s shells were found on the high and dry wrack line on the far right of this next picture. On the sand bars, there were hundreds of FIGHTING CONCHS and a few bigger shells…
Aha! That’s where the big WHELK was that we were looking for. Jennifer (Sanibel) had already found that prize AND three ALPHIES!
Nice finds, Jennifer!
Clark didn’t find another big WHELK but he did find a huuu-jahh piece of WORM ROCK. He knows this is another fave of mine. It doesn’t look like anything fabulous in this photo but trust me, it’s cool. This is a rock formed by a colony of VARIABLE WORM SNAILS (not exactly the same thing as my “wormie shells” we find) and it’s not every day for us to find it this big.
Look at it close up…
Rock on and have a happy Monday!
Road Trip To Honeymoon Island Florida- Part 3 Finale
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In the first 2 posts about our weekend trip to Honeymoon Island State Park, I showed you some cool treasures we found like TURBANS, MERMAID MONEY, AGATIZED CORAL GEODES, rock art and a variety of shells… but wait! I still have a few more things I want to show you. Like the biggest KING’S CROWN we’ve ever seen! Clark found this live mollusk on the bay side of the northern tip of the island.
Of course we put him back where Clark found him after peaking at this awesome creature…
We saw a MANATEE! It’s always a bonus to see them so close to the shore and this guy wasn’t shy at all so came up to say “hi”…
On our walk back we found 2 SAND DOLLARS along with some of the other shells…and remember, it’s a 5 mile round trip- whew! I even wish we had taken more than the 100 fluid oz. we packed for the “hike”.
On Sunday, we decided to take the scenic drive back through Clearwater Beach down to Pass-A-Grille since we heard the shelling was good against the jetty rocks. Nuttin, Honey. All I found was my butt busting on a rock after I slipped on an unsteady chunk of the jetty. Ouch!
Pass-A-Grille jetty rocks
I met a nice couple a few years ago in my shop Kirby Rambo Collections (Clark sold it for me in 2004… 4 weeks before Hurricane Charley. Talk about timing!) who showed me a bag of WORM SHELLS they collected on Fort De Soto beach. I’ve been wanting to check it out ever since so we stopped there too while passing through St Pete. We didn’t find much there either but that’s okay. It was fun to just walk the beach and see the lay of the land. Just like I tell people that visit our beaches….. the shelling changes every day on each beach. There could have been hundreds of WORM SHELLS there the day after or before we walked it. It’s the hunt that makes it fun!
Fort De Soto beach
When I was sorting through our shells when we got home, I found a few bivalves that we had collected on Honeymoon Island that were a little unusual. It might not be so pretty but this ATLANTIC FAT TELLIN which should be called the bent tellin because it has an obvious bend in the middle of it.
I think you can see the bend a little better at this angle…
Shelling Sistah Moira showed me a facebook photo last week of this same LUCINE shell in the next photo. The closest thing I found at Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum is the THICK LUCINE….. but it looks more like a worn PENNSYLVANIA LUCINE to me. I found the same shell on Honeymoon too….
Here’s the inside… some people wouldn’t think this is too pretty but for identification purposes, I have found that the interior of the shell is just as important to identify it correctly as the exterior.
I also found a very worn WHITE CRESTED TELLIN. It’s the first one I’ve ever found.
So now that I’ve shown you all of our treasures from our weekend getaway, I thought I’d throw in a few places we enjoyed other than the beaches. Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures but we both loved the little town of Dunedin (pronounced dun-E-din). It’s one of those quant little village-y areas with funky art studios, sweet gift shops and really good restaurants and bars- most with live entertainment so you can just wander around before and after dinner to enjoy the town. Our fave restaurant was a place called Kelly’s Chicaboom- awesome! We also loved this tiny restaurant/fish market called Olde Bay Cafe at the marina.
We had a wonderful time exploring another gulf coast town of Florida that offers some beautiful and different gifts of the sea but it was time to head back over the Sunshine Skyway…
…to get home to our little island paradise of Sanibel. Home Sweet Home!
Clark Found A Junonia?
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Clark was teasing me to no end on the sand bar at Blind Pass Sanibel when he told me he found something really good. Ut Oh. What!? Oh no you didn't! He said, "Yep!" and showed me a JUNONIA.
Ha! Yes, it's a JUNONIA...... a very worn JUNONIA. But still a whole one so, and yes, it's still better than what I've found....barely. 
After shelling Blind Pass, we decided to visit beach access #7 off West Gulf Drive since we haven't been there in months. Lots of TELLINS....
Oodles of SOUTHERN QUAHOGS....
I was tickled to find several large old worn WHELKS. I love these old "yard shells" so I line them up in an area in my garden to look at them every day.
The low tide in the late afternoons this whole week has been heaven.
14 Inch Clean Horse Conch
Posted by: | CommentsAs you know, I couldn’t wait to post Clark’s 14″ HORSE CONCH (and the video) he found on Saturday. That’ll go down in the ol’ memory vault. What a find! WooHoo! Oh, What’s that you said? You want to see the pictures of the HORSE CONCH all cleaned up? Oh alright, if you insist…..
14 inch horse conch
Pretty, huh? Clark soaked it in a weak bleach solution for a couple of days to get the barnacles softened up to be able to pop them off. It worked! All I had to do it run a metal dental pick over all the crud and it all came right off.
I love the little curve of the tail (anterior) of “him”. I know you are thinking it still doesn’t look all that clean but for some reason I like the brown parts just like they are. I don’t like it to be scrubbed off so that’s why Clark didn’t put too much bleach with the water for soaking. After time, all of that brown part will flake off so at least I will enjoy it until nature takes it’s course.
Here’s a photo taken on the beach with the rest of our finds. We didn’t find a huge quantity of shells but the quality was fab-ul-o-so.
Here’s a better look at the LIGHTNING WHELK Clark found too. Okay, he found the SUNRAY VENUS, KINGS CROWNS and the WHELKS but I found the SAND DOLLARS. I was on a mission to find those SAND DOLLARS so that’s all I was focused on (it’s sounding like an excuse, isn’t it?).
Oh wait! I did find some other cuties too…. WORMIES! And a BABY’S EAR. Clark was in a zone, man, he found this WHITE ROSE PETAL TELLIN too. Geez.
Clark thanks you for all of your fun comments on his big find. He might not comment back but he truly gets a kick out of it (as I do every day!!!). xo
2 Ibis fly over North Captiva
