Al Schweitzer and his Birds

In late September of 1981, Amadee Wohlschlaeger retired from the Post-Dispatch and Al Schweitzer took over the job of drawing the Weatherbird.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Dec. 14, 1986

Page 38

Sep 27, 1981

Presumably Amadee's last bird

Sep 28, 1981

Presumably Al's first bird.  He immediately starts off with a bowtie.

Starting to grow the 3 whiskers he has nowadays

Photo of the original for this day.  Apparently Al would draw some Saturday and holiday birds ahead of time, and leave them for an editor to make a birdline.  You can see that these have typed birdlines.

Indeed it is

Not actually a Schweitzer, drawn by Bob Bradley; see the article below.

July 18, 1982

Page 17

The bird grew Jumbo sized under Schweitzer

This pair is from October 13, one is from the Illinois edition of the paper.  I don't know why they wouldn't be the same.

Another example of edition changes

Wearing his modern straw hat

He is starting to get shorter

Looking very much like nowadays

Aside from the box this could pass for a 2005 bird

Tiny changes between editions

AS initials, it this his last bird?