Mushrooms and Salamanders in Allegheny National Forest
Our love for the natural world pushes us to explore all the green covers in this world and we always come back with some wonderful memories that the forest provides us. When we planned to visit Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, we had no birds or wildflowers or butterflies checklist in our mind. We just wanted to see the different types of forests in North America. Allegheny National Forest was a four hour drive from the place we lived. As usual we had planned our travel in such a manner that we would reach the Allegheny National Forest in the first sunlight. We had some car trouble with the previous night rain , so our travel got delayed. Fortunately , the weather was cloudy in Allegheny, so even our delay turned out to be perfect timing.
One of the most beautiful scenic places I had ever seen in my life. The place looked like a picture perfect wallpaper poster.
We stopped at the Allegheny reservoir and just enjoyed the scenery. Surprisingly this section of Pennsylvania was not very developed , though the forest is just 40 miles from a commercial oil well. The Allegheny reservoir is surrounded by Allegheny National Forest which is around 2000 sq km in area. The morning was very calm and we loved the hassle free side of America. But with the huge forest in front of us , we didn’t know where to start. So we just drove on the forest road and checked the surroundings. We stopped at a place where trail map box was kept. I opened the old trail map box and guess what I found ?? A cute little mice instead of a map ( Maybe he ate them). He didn’t even get scared after seeing me !! I just closed the lid and left the little guy in peace. There was a trail infront of us and we decided to take that trail to explore the Allegheny National Forest.
Rodents are considered a pest in civilized world, so we totally ignore them. In wild places, they are food to numerous species. So they are a key indicators and they always hide well in some holes. In wild, seeing them in daylight is a rarity!
The weather was dull, so even the birds were not chirping. We started looking at the vegetation which looked very different from the forests we had visited earlier. The forest floor was covered with ferns and rocks were covered with mosses. The temperate broadleaf forest had Red maple, American beech, Black cherry , Black birch and many other trees although most of the old forest trees were cut down. We sauntered around enjoying the calmness of that forest. We sat on a moss covered rock and had our simple breakfast. It was lovely to just sit and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. We continued our walk and we started to notice mushrooms on the side of the trail. Vinod and myself are not mycophiles but we are dendrophiles, pluviophiles and always nature enthusiasts.
I felt like we went into a “Alice in Wonderland” with all the tiny beautiful creatures in this jungle. The fern land was so green with the recent rains.
Once we started seeing the mushrooms, we saw them everywhere. We didn’t know how to differentiate edible and poisonous mushrooms but we were not planning to eat them anyway. So we just started clicking photos of those mushrooms in different sizes and colors. The mushrooms were on trees, dead trunks and forest floors. We didn’t know a lot about fungi but we could identify the staghorns , stinkhorns , chicken of the woods etc. Only in human civilization, when it rains there are troubles with electricity, vehicle etc but here it looked like the forest did not face any troubles rather it got happy with the recent rains.
The entire forest was decorated with the sudden spur of mushrooms. That was the first time we had spent hours on mushrooms and we were astounded by the varieties of mushrooms we had seen. In between all the mushrooms , we saw few small , thin and translucent structures growing here and there. After some research back home we came to know that it was Ghost pipe (Monotropa uniflora). That was our first parasitic plant sighting and interestingly their hosts are certain fungi.
The mushrooms came in different shapes and they looked more beautiful with green moss background.
So by this time our casual walk turned to mushroom walk and we were just photographing all the mushrooms we were seeing. Suddenly something very colorful caught my eye and it was just sitting on our trail. I went closer and thought “Why on Earth is a lizard sitting on this wet forest floor ?”. Anyway we never ignore anything that we see in the forest especially if it is very colorful!! So I showed it to Vinod and as usual he knew its name. It was a Salamander and the one we had seen was the Eastern Newt.
Eastern Newt
The Eastern Newt Salamander has bright orange body with red spots. Their color attracted many people to keep them as pets. We were very excited to see our first salamander in Allegheny.
I only knew a Newt in Harry Potter. Himalayan Salamander is the only salamander found in India and they cannot be easily spotted. So Vinod was very excited to see his first Salamander. The raindrops on the Eastern Red-spotted Newt made it look more cute and we later learnt they were kept as pets by many in North America. Now we had seen one Salamander, Vinod started searching for other Salamanders. He was flipping the rocks to see the salamanders hiding underneath. After few flipping, Vinod got lucky. He saw his second Salamander species on the same day and the second one had distinctive yellow spots.
Yellow-spotted salamander
The Spotted salamander or Yellow-spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) is another beautiful salamander we spotted on the same day in Allegheny national forest.
After clicking a few pictures we continued our walk. After some time we reached a stream with some bright sunshine. Till that time it was very dark inside the wooded area so bright sunshine was a welcome sight. All the plants looked very fresh after the rains. There was not much water in the stream even after the rains but that was a good place to sit and relax. We started hearing birds sounds and there were butterflies fluttering around. It was like we went into some forest with secretive beauties and we came out into a different forest. Usually we see atleast one or two fellow trekkers but in this trail we didn’t find any other people(which we will not complain!). Suddenly the weather turned cloudy and there was a drizzle. It was amazing just to sit and enjoy the shower. The activities seemed to pickup after the short drizzle and we started running behind birds, butterflies.
Vinod was thinking whether to run behind butterflies or birds, then he chased both of them and we got few lifers in butterflies.
Vinod spotted a tit like bird which looked like India Coal tit or the Great tit . It turned out to be a Chickadee ! I love the name 🙂 These small passerine birds are usually very restless and watching them makes me always think “How much energy do they have in this tiny body”. The chickadee was searching for insects , caterpillars on the tree and we were just watching his behavior. The weather was very pleasant and there were other birds jumping around and butterflies took to their wings too.
The Black-capped chickadee is similar to “Tit” birds in India. They are very cute, cartoon like birds.
The butterfly activity in North America is less compared to India with its tropical weather. We visited Allegheny National Forest in late August, so there were not many wildflowers near the stream. As with the temperate forests, the summer is a time for growth and most species of plants concentrate only on growth rather than flowering during summer. But with the little flowering happening there was still some butterflies because of the summer heat. Some butterflies were just basking around after the little rain. We saw few colorful ones and a few little ones. Just like the birds there was striking similarity among the butterflies with the one’s we could see in India.
The Meadow Fritillary (Boloria bellona) is frequently encountered in stream sides. The male mostly flies along with its partner. That was the first time we spotted the meadow fritillary.
By the time we had clicked a few butterflies the weather was turning cloudy again. Since we had walked on a trail with no idea where it was going , we decided to head back to the starting place by retracing our path. On the way we spotted some more mushrooms. We always wonder how come we missed those mushrooms while we had walked the same path just a few hours ago ?Particularly when they are colorful !
We saw a sheer variety of mushrooms in Allegheny National Forest which made our visit to the forest a memorable one. That was our first mushroom walk and we enjoyed it thoroughly.
Once we reached the starting place the sky opened up with a heavy downpour. It was already late evening and because of the heavy rain , the road was hardly visible for us to drive. We decided to come back during spring for searching wildflowers as the forest had lots of interesting plants. As it would turnout Allegheny forest would not disappoint us during spring. More on that later in a different post, as wildflowers deserve a separate story !