The original Weatherbird was silent. He was quite literally a “weather” bird; creator Harry B. Martin thought he would need six versions — sun, rain, snow, cloudy, hot and very cold — to cover the range of weather conditions the bird would comment on each day. But he realized there was a wider range of topics that the Weatherbird could cover, and it wasn’t long before the Bird had something to say about nearly everything, with a drawing to match.

Each day, the Post-Dispatch copy editors gather to come up with the Bird’s quips, known as “bird lining.” Today’s winning bird line was “Weathered feathers.” In 2007 and 2006, the Bird celebrated his birthday by singing “Happy Bird-day to me!”