Adventures in building science gear

I’m eager to start surveying and collecting spiders, so I prematurely made a Berlese funnel, a kind of filter for collecting small invertebrates from soil samples. I say “premature”, because I made it just before last week’s big blizzard hit, so everything inside refroze, and I’d also overloaded it with too much gunk. So reset: cleared it out and tried again with a smaller sample and warmer weather. It worked!

No spiders, though. Other little critters. I’ll be hesitant to jump into any leaf piles in the future, I tell you what.