Colonel William Henry Sykes (1790 - 1872), Indian army officer, politician and ornithologist.
He joined the Bombay Army in 1804, returning to Britain in 1837. He became MP for Aberdeen in 1857, and was elected President of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1858.
During his time in India he made collections of both birds and animals. He published his catalogues of birds and mammals of the Deccan in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society in 1832. This included fifty-six birds new to science, including the Indian Pond Heron.
One race of Blue-headed Wagtail, Motacilla flava beema, was named Sykes's Wagtail in British Birds in 1907.
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