I had a rather tame New Year’s Eve. The result, however, was that the next morning I was clear-headed and up in time to begin a new wildlife list for 2016.

Instead of going out clubbing or heading to house parties I would much rather be out searching for foxes in churchyards or listening for owls.

In fact dusk, dark and dawn are under-rated but spectacular times for wildlife watching in the UK. During the winter, those of us who eat, breathe and sleep wildlife often long for the minutes of daylight to slowly return. But that’s to ignore the riches that can be found under cover of darkness, or as the last glow fades from the sky.

For example, a cold evening in December in Somerset brings millions of starlings to roost in the reedbeds in perhaps the most spectacular wildlife event I’ve ever witnessed anywhere in the world. They’re often followed closely by a diving peregrine falcon trying to take one of them out.

Winter’s also the best time to go looking for the cackling spectacles of rookeries that gather in the bare branches of our woods. The mocking sound of thousands of crows preparing to sleep is unbeatable.

Or, on the Norfolk coast, the north west of England and parts of Scotland, if you can get to the right spot for about 5am and catch a good tide, then you can witness hundreds of waders swirling in the light of sunrise, as thousands of geese take off from the water. Their wings suck a rush of air with the sound of a jet engine.

The faint ‘twoo’ that sometimes emanates from outside my bedroom window around midnight in January or February is a comfort. In the morning, there’s no evidence that any visitor has been there, but I know that an owl popped by to perch on a branch of the holm oak at the front of my house.

It’s the fall of night that brings moths tumbling and turning into an illuminated moth trap, to be unwrapped like a Christmas present the next morning.

In Summer, there’s no sound more thrilling than what might be mistaken for a revving motorbike. On the heathlands of the south and east of England, a churring noise is a giveaway of a bird that feels like it would be more at home in balmy Mediterranean scrubland. The nightjar is one perhaps my favourite summer treat, and their churring is only heard after dusk falls. If you’re lucky, you might also be wandering through some woodland, your path lit by the tiny green glistening of glow-worms.

None of this is to say that I don’t enjoy the odd evening out. Casual, friendly spaces (often made merrier by alcohol) are as important for building relationships among nature lovers as they are among any other social group. And obviously in my time I have spent many an evening at the pub setting the world to rights, sharing wildlife adventures. I’ve even attended supplied the alcohol and snacks for a party in a rainforest.

But, at university I was far more likely to be found editing photos of roe deer from that morning than I was to be getting ready to head for a night out clubbing. There’s a sunstantial difference between calm and health socialisation abetted by a pint or two and unhealthy overconsumption of alcohol to plaster over or forget other worries and concerns.

In Regeneration Matthew Cheeseman has written about the effects that a culture of hardcore drinking is having in particular on our generation: “for many, ‘going out’ now implies a performance that begins in ‘pre-drinking’ at home, moves on to a ‘pre-bar’ before climaxing in a loss of reflexivity on the dance floor of a nightclub… With the rise of mental health problems in late capitalism, ‘going out’ can seem a form of self-medication, a sheep-dip in the anaesthetising alcohol of consumerism.”

We have colonised and invaded the night-time. Not in quiet or insidious ways, but we’ve come charging over the hill waving our banners aloft.

Staggering home from a local watering hole, I’m unusual or even unique among my friends in noticing skulking foxes or fluttering moths. Most of them don’t even bat an eyelid at a pipistrelle doing a fly-by of their heads.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that as we lose contact with nature (to the detriment of our mental health), become busier and more stressed, we turn to cheap and easy but ultimately harmful fixes for short-term relief and a quick fix. Binge drinking culture is a huge symptom of that.

We fill our night-time with nightclubs, and night-life no longer refers to the creatures we might glimpse at the bottom of the garden. At dark, as in daylight, we’ve lost touch with nature.

I’m not suggesting we need a sackcloth era of prohibition. But, if you’re looking for a good excuse to hop on the January Dryathlon wagon, then I can think of none as good as wanting to get out and see some of the UK’s best wildlife spectacles.