Hunt for Fungi

Ideally start your hunt while it is still raining. Some more fragile mushrooms will actually fade away quickly once the rain has stopped falling.

When searching in area, find the lowest point and walk up the hill. It's more likely to find mushrooms in lower ground where water collects.

Mushroom hunting usually involves bending over most of the time, so it's not a great activity if you have issues with your back.

Kids can be a big help when looking for mushrooms because they are naturally closer to the ground. But be sure to discuss in advance that you want to keep the mushrooms intact. Otherwise, kids may have a tendency to stomp on the mushrooms or poke them with sticks.

Look at dead logs especially.

These mushrooms puffed out spores every time a drip of water fell on them from the shrub above.

Sometimes it helps to gently lift leaf litter in damp areas to find smaller mushrooms. Be careful not to disturb the area too much though.

This mushroom looked like a chocolate dipped strawberry. We thought we would be able to identify it because it was so odd looking. The closest match in our field guide said it was an "elegant stinkhorn" but we're not sure.

Amazingly it grew one day in our lawn where we had never seen a mushroom before, after many days of rain. As soon as the rain stopped, it slowly bent in half and then disappeared within an hour or two.

Mushrooms can make you ill or even poison you. Do not trust your interpretation of a field guide. If you want to cook with wild mushrooms, hunt with a qualified guide.

If you want to become a mushroom expert, look for a mycological society near you.