Baron Christoph Feldegg was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n army officer and naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

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Feldegg fought in the Napoleonic wars and in recognition of his many gallant deeds was created a Baron in 1817. He served in Dalmatia

Dalmatia

Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....

, eventually becoming Colonel and Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion of Chaseurs.

Feldegg accumulated a large collection of natural history specimens, particularly birds. He was a correspondent of C. L. Brehm

Christian Ludwig Brehm

Christian Ludwig Brehm was a German pastor and ornithologist. He was the father of Alfred Brehm.Brehm was born near Gotha, and studied at the University of Jena. In 1813 he became the minister at Renthendorf, a village sixty miles south of Leipzig, where he remained until his death...

, John Gould

John Gould

John Gould was an English ornithologist and bird artist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...

 and Hermann Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel was a German ornithologist and herpetologist.-Early life and education:Schlegel was born at Altenburg, the son of a brassfounder. His father collected butterflies, which stimulated Schlegel's interest in natural history...

, and served for a time with the ornithologist Dr Karl Michahelles

Karl Michahelles

Karl Michahelles was a German zoologist and physician originally from Bavaria.Michahelles travelled extensively in Dalmatia and Croatia, becoming well known for his study of the birds of the area. He died aged only 27 in Greece, where he went to practice medicine and study the wildlife...

. His collection was donated to the Natural History Museum in Prague

National Museum (Prague)

The National museum is a Czech museum institution intended to systematically establish, prepare and publicly exhibit natural scientific and historical collections. It was founded 1818 in Prague by Kašpar Maria Šternberg...

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Feldegg had a number of birds named after him, including the Black-headed Wagtail, Motacilla flava feldegg, the Balkan and Black Sea sub-species of the Yellow Wagtail.