But the killing of trout is only a small part of the pleasure of being here when the may-fly is up.  How pleasant to live almost entirely in the open air! after the day’s fishing is over to rest awhile in the cool manor house hard by the stream, watching from the window of the oak-panelled little room the wonders of creation in the garden through which the river flows!  Now, from the recesses of the overhanging boughs on the tiny island opposite, a moorhen swims forth, cackling and pecking at the water as she goes.  She is followed by five little balls of black fur—­her red-beaked progeny; they are fairly revelling in the evening sunlight, diving, playing with each other, and thoroughly enjoying life.

Up on the bough of the old fir, bearing its heavy mantle of ivy from base to topmost twig, and not twenty yards from the window, a thrush sits and sings.  You must watch him carefully ere you assure yourself that those sweet, trilling notes of peerless music come from that tiny throat.  A rare lesson in voice production he will teach you.  Deep breathing, headnotes clear as a bell and effortless, as only three or four singers in Europe can produce them, without the slightest sense of strain or throatiness—­such are the songs of our most gifted denizens of the woods.

What a wondrous amount of life is visible on an evening such as this!  Among the fast-growing nettles beyond the brook scores of rabbits are running to and fro, some sitting up on their haunches with ears pricked, some gamboling round the lichened trunk of the weeping ash tree.

Out of the water may-flies are rising and soaring upwards to circle round the topmost branches of the firs.  Looking upwards, you may see hundreds of them dancing in unalloyed delight, enjoying their brief existence in this beautiful world.

Birds of many kinds, swallows and swifts, sparrows, fly-catchers, blackbirds, robins and wrens, all and sundry are busy chasing the poor green-drakes.  As soon as the flies emerge from their husks and hover above the surface of the stream, many of them are snapped up.  But the trout have “gone down,”—­they are fairly gorged for the day; they will not trouble the fly any more to-night.

And then those glorious bicycle rides in the long summer evenings, when, scarcely had the sun gone down beyond the ridge of rolling uplands than the moon, almost at the full, and gorgeously serene, cast her soft, mysterious light upon a silent world.  One such night two anglers, gliding softly through the ancient village of Bibury, dismounted from their machines and stood on the bridge which spans the River Coln.  Below them the peaceful waters flowed silently onwards with all the smoothness of oil, save that ever and anon rays of silvery moonlight fell in streaks of radiant whiteness upon its glassy surface.