E. C. Stuart Baker

Edward Charles Stuart Baker CIE OBE FZS FLS (1864 – 16 April 1944) was a British ornithologist and police officer. He catalogued the birds of India and produced the second edition of the Fauna of British India which included the introduction of trinomial nomenclature.

Baker was educated at Trinity College, Stratford-upon-Avon and in 1883 followed his father into the Indian Police Service. He spent most of his career in India in the Assam Police, rising to the rank of Inspector-General commanding the force. In 1910 he was placed on Special Criminal Investigation duty. In 1911 he returned to England and took up the appointment of Chief Police Officer of the Port of London Police, remaining in this position until his retirement in 1925. For his services in this role during the First World War he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours. After retirement he became Mayor of Croydon.

He was an excellent tennis player and an enthusiastic big game hunter. He lost his left arm to a panther (in Silchar, Assam), was tossed by a gaur and trampled by an Indian rhinoceros during various hunting expeditions.

During his spare time he studied and collected the birds of India. His books included The Indian Ducks and their Allies (1908), Game Birds of India and Ceylon (1921), The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Birds. (1922; eight volumes), Mishmi Man-eater (1928), The Nidification of the Birds of the Indian Empire (1932), and Cuckoo Problems (1942; the cuckoo was his chief interest within ornithology). He made a comprehensive collection of nearly 50,000 Indian birds' eggs, part of which he donated to the Natural History Museum, where he spent a lot of time working on the egg collections from India and Thailand. His eight-volume contribution to The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma series became the standard reference work on the subject. Part of the collection, about 152 specimens were sold to the private museum of the Tzar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria. He also served on government advisory committees on the protection of birds and was from 1913 to 1936 honorary secretary and treasurer of the British Ornithologists' Union.

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