There was a horde of robins gathered inside a tree near Allen Lane Station on Monday morning.

Kimberly Soles, a neighborhood resident who I was meeting with to talk about a separate story that you'll soon see, pointed out the birds. She said they were probably there because there were berries on the tree.

"They'll be gone soon," she said, as she encouraged me to take a photo of them while I could.

I missed that opportunity—the robins had moved on by the time I got there. But I did have a chance to swing by the tree, and she was right—there certainly were berries of a sort there. (You can see the picture at right.)

It's certainly unusual to see robins in early February. But as the Super Bowl fades away, the odds increase that we're going to see a winter with much less snow than we did last year.

Granted, there's still plenty of winter left. But it's pretty clear that there's a stark different between this year's and last. I, for one, have fewer 5 a.m. wakeups to report on snow. The School District of Philadelphia may not need to use as many makeup days as it did last year.

Phillyweather.net half-predicted this after the bizarre October snowstorm that hit a few months ago. In a piece that cited historical data, it said an early snowstorm usually portends a winter that is "colder and less snowy than is normal." There hasn't been as much wintry precipitation in years when the region gets October snow.

It hasn't been particularly cold. But it hasn't snowed very much this winter, and as a result, in some ways, we've missed out so far on some chances for neighbors to work together to help one another out. That's something that always happens during snowstorms here and elsewhere. The Mt. Airy-Nippon-Bryan-Cresheim Town Watch also hasn't had to use its private snow removal budget, and the city really hasn't had to spend money on that either.

We haven't seen cones on the streets, and we haven't seen milk missing from the grocery store aisles. (Though we did get a lot of that during Hurricane Irene.)

The robins here are just one more indication of that. Even if the season seems off, though, it's hard for me to have a problem with their presence here.