THE WINTERS OF NORTH-CENTRAL IOWA 25 
were about to burst in sqgme instances. And the gardens bore 
unmistakable signs of the retarded frosts. 
On November 13th, 1918, Mrs. Fannie Kellogg of Charles.City 
picked enough strawberries for a good sized dish. On December 
24th, Mrs. Dutton picked cress in the garden for Christmas dinner. 
Mrs. H. Blunt gathered beets from the garden at this same time, 
and she had Johnny-jumpups in bloom. Is this not, verily, a repeti- 
tion of that old winter of 1854, when men chopped wood all winter 
long in their shirt sleeves? So it seemed indeed. But one of the 
greatest notes of mildness was yet due. 
On December 17th, in a creek on the Floyd Road, the writer found 
a frog which wiggled rather inactively away, when touched. It was 
in the bottom of the stream when first seen, and minnows were 
swimming around in the water. But when the frog was moved, it 
continued its journey, proving that it had not yet reached the 
hibernation period. 
The final triumph of the season, however, was the glad chirp of 
a robin on December 24th. Mr. Clement L. Webster of Charles 
City, states that robins have been known to remain throughout the 
winter occasionally, when a hollow along the river offered protection 
from the winter winds, and when some human hand would offer 
them food and a crude sort of shelter. But he had no instances in 
late years of any remaining under any conditions. I had never 
before seen a robin at this season in this locality. It was a novel 
and joyful experience when I was summoned by telephone to the 
neighborhood in which the robin had been seen. It was hovering 
around the back porches, trying to hop in the gravelly parts under- 
neath the porches, where there was none of the snow. When a 
person passed too near, however, it took to the top of some of the 
tall hard maples along the street. Some attempts were made to 
scatter food for it, but whether it ate any of the offered crumbs 
I can not say. Just the year before, in a wood North of 
town, another bird enthusiast and myself had discovered some red 
headed woodpeckers which were wintering with us. That was the 
first time during the years which we had tramped that region, at 
which we had ever seen the red-heads in winter. They had stored 
acorns in holes of their own making, in an old stump. We discovered 
them at their lunch counter. But now a robin was found and in 
the dead of winter. We began to think that Nature knew no laws 
at all. Whether this was a robin which had not yet migrated and 
