This year’s Dead Duck Day official celebration will be in the Azores. And of course you can celebrate it wherever you are.
The celebration will happen on June 5, 2025, Thursday, 15:55 [Azores time], at the Museu Carlos Machado Divulgação, Santo André Center, Ponta Delgada, São Miguel Island, Azores.
This will be the 30th Dead Duck Day. Kees Moeliker will commemorate the dramatic death of the first documented victim of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck and the tragedy of billions of other birds that die from colliding with glass buildings. Entrance to the event is free.
Watch the Webcast
The Dead Duck Day celebration will be webcast live from the Museu Carlos Machado Divulgação in the Azores. This will be the very first time the celebration will be webcast:
https://www.youtube.com/live/yWdyQgy-ugk
Special guards on duty that day will attempt to (as gently as possible) prevent any birds from colliding with the museum’s glass windows.
Basic Info about Dead Duck Day
Dead Duck Day honors the mallard duck that collided with the glass facade of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam and became known to science as the first (documented) ‘victim’ of homosexual necrophilia in that species, and earned its discoverer (ornithologist Kees Moeliker) the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize. Here is video of Kees Moeliker’s TED talk about it:
Billions of Birds
Dead Duck Day also commemorates the billions of other birds that die(d) from colliding with glass buildings, and challenges people to find solutions to this global problem.
A Note about Time
Previous Dead Duck Day celebrations have happened in Rotterdam, The Netherlands — which is two time zones east of the Azores. Thus the celebration in the traditional Dead Duck Day logo shows a time (17:55) different from the poster for this year’s, relatively-western-based celebration (15:55). It’s all the same moment, though!
Ducking the Question: Dinner
The traditional Dead Duck Day celebrations in Rotterdam finished with a group walk to a nearby restaurant, where everyone shared in a six-course duck dinner. Will that happen this year, in Ponta Delgata?
The organizers have not announced the answer to that delicious question. You will have to come to the celebration, and see!