Thursday, September 11, 2008

Photos from Blind Pass

Half the shells are in bleach water soaking, when I get them out of the bucket, I'll put the other half in. When they're done I'll put pictures of them on the blog. I will tell you that I found a junonia while walking around the first big pile of shells. I saw a few brown spots under a couple other shells. I thought it was a cone and reached down to get it. When I moved another shell, I could see what it was. It was large and perfect except the little white tip was gone. :-( Still, it's a pretty shell. We found 2 more that were damaged a little and several pieces. Another lady came about an hour after daylight and she went up just a little way from us, drug some shells around with her foot and found a big junonia that was perfect. She was so excited! She has been shelling for 30 years and this is the first one she has found. It was fun to watch. Her husband was waiting in the car and she called him and he came out to look at it.

Besides the junonia, the most exciting shells I found were some perfect, flat fan shells(or zigzag scallop); bright yellow, deep burgundy and a coral color. Also found a bright yellow scallop for the first time. I also found lots of orange ones.

There were a lot of lightning whelks, a few pear whelks, banded and true
tulips, a couple alphabet cones, a couple florida cones, apple murex, juvenile horse conchs, lettered olives, several kinds and colors of scallops, mussels, oysters, clams, worm shells, sea urchins, turbans, jewel boxes, pieces of coral, calico clam, duck clams, surf clams, pen shells, a couple of button shells, 1 cantharus, slipper shells, fighting conch, buttercups, a few nutmegs, several paper figs, kitten's paws, a very few augers and ceriths and one horn shell,cockles of almost all kinds, a natica, arks, turkey wings, moon snails, and cross-barred venus clams. I'm sure I've left out a few, but that was a pretty good variety.

I have a really deep reddish orange shell that I haven't seen before and don't know what it is. It has had spines on it that have mostly worn off. I've looked in my shell books and I'm leaning toward a thorny oyster.

When I get it cleaned up, I'll put a picture on and if anyone knows what it is please let me know. :-) I have just given myself a refresher course on the Southwest Florida Seashells. :-)

It was not a good day to be a nine pointed star fish! They kept washing onto the beach and we carried them back, only to see them coming in again. I put four of them back four different times before they finally didn't come in again at my feet.

There were some roseatte spoonbills standing just under and on the other side of the bridge. Water had been trapped there and the birds were checking out the shells in it. A heron kept walking over to us and just standing within 4' and just standing there watching people picking up shells and looking out at the big waves.

A couple of the pictures may be a little fuzzy because there wasn't enough light and it didn't focus well.































7 comments:

J said...

How fun!!! Can't wait to see the shell pics!!!

Unknown said...

pffft on the junonia thing............

himmycatgirl said...

OMG! What a great shelling time you had! CONGRATS on the junonia!

I was just there last week. The 1st few days were good shelling but then it fizzled.

I can't wait to see your photos!

gpc said...

Oh man. You are a much better sheller than I am. Even when I am by a motherlode like that, my 'eye' is not as good as many others'. Even so, I sure wish I'd been there! I've only found zig zags once, and have never found some of the others. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

Mare said...

Your photos at dawn are just beautiful. =)

And I had to giggle at the thought of the birds hanging out-too funny!

Can't wait to see your treasure.

Louise said...

Hey, thanks for stopping by my blog. I'm glad you did because I found this! I love shells. I love hunting for shells. I've never lived near the ocean, so it's something I but rarely get to do. What a fun post.

Debbie said...

Thanks for the info last time on the turtle nests. Now I have another dumb question..........hey it is how we learn right???? I take it you go out with flashlights when the high tide is starting to recede? I wanted to do that a couple of times but was a little apprehensive as to what else was out there besides shells. Do many people do this?