This year’s Dead Duck Day celebration was spectacular in multiple ways. Maybe most spectacular, after the traditional commemoration of the incident that led to ornithologist Kees Moeliker’s eye-opening and Ig Nobel Prize-winning scientific paper “The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard“, was the arrival of Rotterdam’s deputy mayor bearing a message and a medallion from the Dutch king, bestowing a knighthood upon Kees Moeliker. The photo here shows Deputy Mayor Tim Versnel pinning the medallion on Kees Moeliker.
This Dead Duck Day was also the official retirement party of Kees Moeliker from Rotterdam’s Natural History Museum, where he was curator and then Director.
News reports about this abound. One of them, in de Havenloods, sports the simple headline “Duck man Kees Moeliker knighted at farewell of Het Natuurhistorisch“.