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Why the Moon Shapes the Woodland Night

Step into an oak wood on the night of a full moon and you can read the shape of the path without a torch. Come back a fortnight later, on a new moon, and you will not see your own boots. That swing in light is not just a matter of convenience for the walker; it is one of the strongest signals in the nocturnal calendar, and it quietly rearranges who is out, when and where.

Small mammals such as wood mice and voles tend to forage less boldly on bright, moonlit nights, keeping tight to the tussocks and fallen branches. Bats respond too: pipistrelles often emerge later and hug the tree lines when the moon is high, while some species prefer the dark half of the lunar month altogether. Tawny owls hunt largely by sound, but moonlight helps them move between favoured perches and gives them a clear line on a moving shape below. Badgers, with poor eyesight and an excellent nose, are the least bothered of all — which is precisely why a sett is a wonderful thing to watch on a black, damp night.

Keep a moon diary for a year and you begin to see those patterns for yourself, written in your own hand, on your own patch of woodland.

Setting Up Your Moon Diary

You need very little: an A6 hardback notebook that fits a coat pocket, a pencil (ink smears in damp air and freezes in the cold), and a small red torch. Red light preserves your night vision, which takes a full twenty minutes to develop and about two seconds to destroy.

Rule a few columns before you go out, and record the same things every time so that the entries can be compared:

• Date and time — use the 24-hour clock, and note sunset and moonrise as well as the start and finish of your walk.
• Moon phase — waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full, waning gibbous, last quarter, waning crescent, new. Add the percentage illumination if you know it.
• Light reaching the wood — a simple phrase such as "dappled on the ride, black under the conifers" is more useful than you might think.
• Cloud — in eighths, or oktas. Zero is a clear sky, eight is fully overcast.
• Weather — wind direction and strength, temperature, and whether the leaf litter is wet. Wet litter is noisy, and animals know it.
• Sound log — the time, direction and identity of every call you can manage.

Reading Cloud Cover and Light Levels

Cloud is the great variable. A full moon behind eight oktas of low cloud gives you almost nothing; the same moon through three oktas of broken cumulus can throw moving shadows across a clearing and make the whole wood feel alert. Note the height of the moon as well. A low summer moon has more atmosphere to travel through and gives a softer, honeyed light, while a high winter moon casts hard-edged shadows across the rides.

A typical entry might read: "19 November, 20:40. 92 per cent waxing gibbous, cloud 3/8, moonlight on the ride but not into the interior. Temperature 4°C, wind south-west, force 2. Female tawny owl ke-wick at 20:52, north-east. Wood mouse rattling in leaf litter by the old stump." Six months of lines like that will tell you more about your wood than any guidebook.

Listening for the Night Shift

Sound behaves differently after dark. Cool, dense air carries it further, and a still, damp night is far better for listening than a dry, windy one. Stand still for ten minutes before you start writing anything down; your ears need time to tune.

• Tawny owl — the familiar hoo-hoo, with the female's sharp ke-wick answering.
• Barn owl — a rasping screech over rough grass at the wood's edge, more often heard than seen.
• Fox — the three-part scream of midwinter, regularly mistaken for a person in distress.
• Badger — low chuckles and steady snuffling, best heard near a sett on a dark, still night.
• Woodcock — roding flights at dusk in spring, with croaks and thin whistles as it crosses the clearing.
• Nightjar — a steady churring from a favoured branch, summer only, and worth a special trip.

Forest Crafts for Moonlit Evenings

The quiet evenings of the dark half of the month are ideal for making things. Work only with fallen wood and garden or hedgerow material, and never take anything from a nature reserve or a site of special scientific interest without permission.

• Moon-phase journal cover — fold cartridge paper into signatures and bind them with waxed linen thread between two stiff boards in a simple pamphlet stitch.
• Moon stick — whittle a hazel rod and cut a notch for each night of the lunar month, marking the full moons with a ring.
• Beeswax candles — poured into old jam jars, they give the gentlest light and spare your night vision when shielded by a hand.
• Nettle cordage — stripped and twisted in late summer, ready for tying bundles of notes or kindling.
• Tannin ink — soak crushed oak galls or oak bark in water, drop in a rusty nail for a few days and strain. Test it on scrap paper before committing your best page.

Walking the Lunar Year

The names commonly given to full moons drift between traditions, and few of them describe a British wood particularly well, so invent your own as the seasons turn. What matters is the pattern you build up.

January brings fox calls and hard frost, with the moon riding high and bright over bare branches. February is the month of drumming woodpeckers by day and the first frogspawn in the pond. April fills the wood floor with wood anemone, and bats begin appearing earlier in the evening. By late May the bluebells are out and the nightjar has returned, though the short nights leave little true darkness to work with. September's harvest moon gives you long, bright walks; October brings the deer rut and a wood full of barking and crashing. December closes the year with long, cold nights and the best chance of hearing a barn owl over the fields.

After twelve months you will have something no app can give you: a handwritten account of how light, weather and wildlife move together through the year on your own particular patch of woodland.