Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Arthur Butler (4 July 1843 – 16 April 1916) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 ornithologist and British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 officer. He is commemorated in the scientific specific name for Hume's Owl

Hume's Owl

The Hume’s Owl or Hume’s Tawny Owl is a species of owl. As its alternative name implies, it is closely related to the more widespread Tawny Owl....

, Strix butleri.

Butler was born at Coton House

Coton House

Coton House is a late 18th century country house at Churchover, near Rugby, Warwickshire which is now in use as a corporate commercial training centre. It is a Grade II* listed building....

, Churchover

Churchover

Churchover is a small village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. The population of the parish in the 2001 census was 230.It is located around 4 miles north of Rugby, and is administratively part of the borough of Rugby....

, Warwickshire

Warwickshire

Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...

 and studied at Eton. He joined the army at the age of 21, and served in Gibraltar

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. He retired in 1884 as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Irish Rifles. His son Arthur Lennox Butler was also an ornithologist.

Butler was a keen bird collector and taxidermist. His collections were acquired by the Natural History Museum in part directly and also through the collections of Allan Octavian Hume

Allan Octavian Hume

Allan Octavian Hume was a civil servant, political reformer and amateur ornithologist in British India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, a political party that was later to lead the Indian independence movement...

, Lord Rothschild

Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild

Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild FRS , a scion of the Rothschild family, was a British banker, politician, and zoologist.-Biography:...

and others.

Further reading

• Biographies for Birdwatchers - Barbara and Richard Mearns ISBN 0-12-487422-3
• Obituary. Ibis 1916:644-645