fungi hunting in Karelian forest - 23 foto

Hola, setero! Today I share some mushroom impressions I brought from my day trip to Karelia forest this September. My friend @bambuka invited me to check the forest together, in the middle of the week (when other mushroom hunters supposed to sit at homes, unlike on weekends, when forest suddenly becomes pretty crowded place...) Of course, I gladly agreed! Joint venture is a bit a sports, a game, i.e. double fun!

So, early in the morning we were there -- it took us 2 hours to reach the place by car.

This time I equipped myself with a lightweight and roomy wicker basket (not like last time, when I focused on photography and for mushroom trofeys disrespectfully grabbed just a couple of plastic bags ...)

Waterproof rubber boots, a charged phone - were the must... a little foldable knife to pick the mushrooms, and of course a small lunch bag also was with us. The honourable @bambuka (in the shot above) had his favourite staff with him - in our silver years it's not a superfluous thing on long hikes...

The weather treated us well. It was not a sunny day, tho the sun visited and illuminated our photos several times; generally the lighting was decent. At times the sky sent a very slight rain from above, almost imperceptible (known as "mushroom rain") that wasn't going to wet us at all... so, the rain jackets we had brought with us, were of no use. It's not a big problem - that kind of stock is not excessive, I was happy to carry that weight on me.

To keep the good tradition, I took a picture of the first mushroom I encountered. No, it was not edible and I did not pick it...

There were many mushrooms in the forest, and we enjoyed and greeted all of them - even the non-edible specimens, cause we both are not just mushroom pickers, but also photo-hunters :)

Oh, I forgot to tell you about this side of our equipment. @bambuka is a Sony devotee (a full frame compact Alpha in his hands, in the photo above), and I arm myself with a full-frame Canon 5D camera. This time I've brought along a manual fish-eye (Zenitar 16mm), and my everyday fave - macro telephoto Sigma 150mm, most of the captures you see in this post were made with it.

Ok, now let me present you some proof-pics -- indeed, there were mushrooms in the forest.

This is Amanita muscaria, aka fly agaric - the most fancy, bright and (visually) beautiful mushroom of Russian forests.

I assure you, no water bottle taken from home was used to make these photos - nature took care of everything! The rain makes the mushroom cap look especially spectacular...

Above is the same mushroom, a fly agaric again. Yes, it doesn't necessarily have to look spectacular, sometimes it looks plain like that... especially when it is aged. By the way, note the "whirling" bokeh of my Sigma.

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The old rotting stump is also a food! in the photo above, it is besieged by an army of marauding soldiers... oh, I was going to say: saprophyte fungi.

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Léccinum scábrum is not among my favourite mushrooms; they are as usual very soft, soak water and lose shape quickly (also, in the dish they give no texture ...). Very often even young Léccinum is no longer good enough to pick up... this mushroom you see in the photo, I picked just to hang it on a tree branch, in a prominent place -- left it as a present for a forest squirrel.

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Mushroom abundance! A case where you can cut mushrooms with a scythe :)

The autumn forest is a great place for photo walks; every bush is strewn with berries and colourful leaves, snags and stumps are covered in moss and lichens and are a joy to behold. I think the winter forest, for all its charms, is much more boring - all the beauty of nature is hidden under a thick blanket.

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What else to tell? All in all, I took about 500 pics before both my batteries died (I had a spare one as well). There was no room left in my basket, to pick more mushrooms.

We were overwhelmed with visual impressions and mushrooms too, and still we couldn't stop and our hands reached for almost every good mushroom we saw... and our feet were already starting to complain that it was time to turn around towards home.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about our lunch. We stopped for some sandwiches and a chat in this lovely clearing, here I changed my macro-telephoto to fisheye, and took some panoramic shots (not very successful... I'm having trouble focusing manually on this lens, it requires considerable adjustment of focus at even a slight change in distance, doing it all manually -- not easy...)

We treated each other to our cheese and turkey meat sandwiches... and I remember a very nice moment: we snacked on them with lingonberries, which we picked straight from the bushes. It was divine! By September the lingonberries were fully ripe and even more so, a little overripe, a little fermented from hanging on the bushes, and bursting with gusto in the mouth, it was a beautiful natural sauce, the best lingonberries I'll remember for a long time.

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Another thing worth mentioning -- at some point I got so carried away with taking photos that I lost sight of my friend and, more importantly, lost it on hearing, so that even loud "awwwws" made it impossible to tell which way I should go to connect us together: all directions in the forest are the same, you know... luckily, my phone still was charged, and after a few attempts and apparently 40 minutes or so, our little company have reunited. But I really got lost in the woods! No jokes... This little adventure certainly added some spice to our hike, and I will remember for a long time.

Time to say goodbye! -- and next time.

And the last shot; the best part of our harvest - Ceps - already at home, on the cutting board. My wife was surprised and pleased (she is a mushroom lover too), she roasted them with potatoes the very next day. Bon appetit!

All images taken by me, copyright (c) @qwerrie

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