After nearly 50 years on Sesame Street, the actor who has brought Big Bird to life on the iconic children's television series since its debut in 1969 is retiring.

Puppeteer Caroll Spinney, who also plays Oscar the Grouch, has hand-picked his successors to play the two roles after mentoring them for more than two decades.

Spinney said in a statement that Big Bird has brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul.

He said but now it's time for two performers that he has worked with and respected — and actually hand-picked for the guardianship of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch — to take alter-egos into their hands and continue to give them life.

Spinney, 84, helped create two characters that have indelibly marked the childhoods of millions of people.

He has won multiple Daytime Emmys for his work, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award. He also has a Grammy Award to his credit, for best children's recording.

His life was the subject of the 2014 documentary I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story.

Big Bird, the instantly recognizable giant yellow bird with the huge beak, is more than eight feet (2.5 meters) tall. In 2000, he was named a Living Legend by the US Library of Congress. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sesame Workshop co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney said in a statement that Caroll has been one of the leading lights of Sesame Street from the very beginning.