Litter sifting, this is just what it sounds like, you take a big cloth bag which has a screen in it, throw a shovel or two of the material to be sifted and sift away. Below the screen is a collecting area for the sifted material. Once you have a sufficient amount of litter in the collection area, you can dump into either another bag for transport to your work area or in my case today into a bucket. Once you are ready to go to work on it, the material is partitioned into mesh bags for the next step which is drying, The Winkler bags I use will comfortably handle three mesh bags which ideally should not be allowed to touch during the drying process, if they this gives damp spots which your critters can hide out in. These mesh bags are then hung inside of the cloth Winkler bags and allowed to dry for several days, depending on the environment this can be anywhere from two days to a week, although most animals will be collected in the first day or two.

The animals in the sample are collected at the bottom of the bag in a cup filled with alcohol, this brings to point the down side of this technique, your critters are dead. However with a little fiddling you can make up a live collect cup which will work fairly well if you need you sample living. The type of cup you use matters little provided it will fit inside the collecting tube, I use cut off 16 oz. drinking water bottles.I have been eager to try this out at my place and since the last few days have been nice and warm it was time, I suspect it has never been tried out in this neck of the woods as it is generally perceived as too dry. Already though I have found a very small Pheidole minor in the sample so it is going to be interesting to see what else pops up. Along with ants there can be huge numbers of other soil animals present in a sample, mites are often esp. common.

The collecting site




The sample




The sifter, note full collection area at bottom of bag




Full Sifter




Winkler Bags




Mesh bags




Mesh bag with hand for scale




Full mesh Bag




Inside view of Winkler bag





Winkler with mesh bags inserted




Winklers setup




The collection cup

Credit to Mrmacophyl