Mark is on the level

I saw a hummingbird in the garden one summer. It was a hawk moth. Not as striking as the psychedelic elephant hawk moth but pretty big and it's wings were buzzing away in a blur of motion as it fed on the flowers.
When Stephen Moss wrote his unassuming natural history of an English village called Mark in the Somerset Levels he chose (or maybe it was the publisher) the title Wild Hares & Hummingbirds. The name is a bit deceptive because Moss is at his most knowledgeable talking about birds but perhaps it didn't make a great title or theme for a cover graphic.
This is a very slight tome - there is nothing much to it in size or scope - but it reminds us that observation of the small things in life can be the most pleasurable and, in an inverse perspective on human life, much more significant than our short term obsessions with celebrity and political posturing.