Max Ward’s videos on YouTube channel A Journey into the Forest have caught the attention of fungi-experts and novices alike, with tips for those who want to head outside for a forage.

Max, who is known as Frowning Sparrow to his online fans, has been heading out into the region’s forests to create the videos since April, showing viewers which delectable mushrooms to go on the hunt for.

He also has tips on the equipment to take and spotting poisonous mushrooms.

Of the videos on the channel, three focus on mushrooms and other wonders found in nature, depicting visits to the Macedon Ranges, the Harcourt Oak Forest and Moonlight Flat’s pine plantation.

The idea evolved out of a series of school projects Max completed after the Wards moved to Castlemaine last year.

“I came (to Castlemaine) in term two and it was mushrooming season then. I chose to do mushrooming as my topic,” Max says.

“One of my friends was very enthusiastic about mushrooming so I wrote a book for him to take and read.”

Max gradually moved into moving pictures, filming instructional videos on sorbet and cheese-making.

“Then I heard some of my friends had these YouTube channels and I was like ‘Oh, I’ve wanted to do this for ages, so let’s upload these videos I made onto the internet’,” Max says.

Since mid-April Max has been posting videos on mushrooms, a topic that fascinates him.

“I found this thing out about mushrooms: they are actually more related to animals than to plants,” he says.

He has even learnt a few tricks he can do with one of his favourite fungi.

“It’s a luminescent ghost fungus. What I did last year, when I found some, was put it in a little box so it would not release spores everywhere. Then I put it in my room at night,” he says.

The box glowed in the dark.

“It was really cool,” Max says.

Max’s family head out foraging for mushrooms every few weeks during central Victoria’s mushrooming season.

The best time to pick wild mushrooms is usually from March to May.

So far this season has not been great for one edible variety, slippery jacks, though it’s been great for safron milk caps, Max’s father Paul says.

“I think it’s good for the kids to get off their screens and get out into the outdoors,” he says.

“They are engaging with the natural world, learning how it works and discovering the systems that support us, making life possible on the planet.”

Mr Ward remembers hearing his grandparents’s tales about searching central Victoria for morel, an elusive edible fungus.

As a boy in Swan Hill he spent many early mornings hunting for mushrooms in Mallee paddocks.

The best harvest years were the wet ones in the early to mid-1970s.

“I enjoyed that quiet hunt in the mornings. It’s a nice thing to do, poking your way around trying to find them,” Mr Ward says.

Despite the appeal, picking wild mushrooms can be dangerous for those who are not sure what they are looking for.

“Misidentification is where most mushroom poisonings occur,” Mr Ward says.

Last month Victoria’s chief health officer Charles Guest warned even mushrooms found in people’s backyard could appear similar to edible varieties.

“If you have any doubts about a species of fungus or mushroom, don’t eat it,” he said at the time.

Professor Guest urged anyone who became ill after eating mushrooms to seek urgent medical advice and, if possible, take samples of the whole mushroom for identification.

Mr Ward puts it a different way.

“There’s an old saying that there are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters. But there aren’t many old, bold mushroom hunters,” Mr Ward says.

He relies, in part, on knowledge passed down from older generations. Much of that information came to Australia from parts of Europe where mushrooming is more popular.

That wisdom can work in Australia because many mushrooms growing in non-native plantations came from Europe and only grow under certain trees.

So far Max’s mushroom videos have all been in plantations of trees native to Europe.

That looks set to continue. It is illegal to harvest wild mushrooms in national parks. The rules are different in plantations.

People can also ask farmer’s permission to go into paddocks.

Max is dreaming of a trip to Adelaide, where he would like to film in local plantations he has seen on a previous family holiday.

In the short-term he is planning a respond to viewer requests.

“They’ve asked that I do a cooking video – one where I actually go into the kitchen and cook the mushrooms,” he says.