Colonel Henry Maurice Drummond-Hay (7 June 1814 – 3 January 1896) was a Scottish naturalist and ornithologist. He was the son of Vice-Admiral Sir Adam Drummond, K.C.B., of

Megginch Castle Megginch Castle is a 15th-century castle in Perth and Kinross, in central Scotland. It was the family home of Cherry, 16th Baroness Strange. It is now lived in by Lady Strange's daughter, Catherine Drummond-Herdman, her husband and four childre ...

Perthshire Perthshire (locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, ...

. In June 1832 he received his commission in the 42nd Royal Highlanders, serving in Ireland, Malta,

Corfu Corfu (, ) or Kerkyra ( el, Κέρκυρα, Kérkyra, , ; ; la, Corcyra.) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the margin of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The isl ...

, Bermuda, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Drummond-Hay was the first president of the

British Ornithologists' Union The British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) aims to encourage the study of birds ("ornithology") and around the world, in order to understand their biology and to aid their conservation. The BOU was founded in 1858 by Professor Alfred Newton, Henry ...

and one of its twenty founders in 1858. On his marriage to Charlotte Elizabeth Richardson Hay, the heiress of Seggieden, in 1859 he took her family name of Hay. For the last twenty years of his life he devoted himself to the natural history of Perthshire and Tayside, especially the formation of the Perth Museum. His son, also named Henry Maurice Drummond-Hay (1869–1932), was a naturalist and a planter in

British Ceylon British Ceylon ( si, බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය ලංකාව, Britānya Laṃkāva; ta, பிரித்தானிய இலங்கை, Biritthāṉiya Ilaṅkai) was the British Crown colony of present-day Sri Lanka between ...

(now

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

). The son is commemorated in the scientific names of two species of snakes, ''

Aspidura drummondhayi ''Aspidura drummondhayi'', commonly known as Drummond-Hay's rough-sided snake or කෙටිවල් මැඩිල්ලා (''ketiwal medilla'') in Sinhala, is a species of snake in the family Colubridae. The species is endemic to Sri L ...

'' and ''

Rhinophis drummondhayi ''Rhinophis drummondhayi'', commonly known as Drummond-Hay's earth snake, is a species of snake in the family Uropeltidae. The species is endemic to Sri Lanka. Habitat The preferred natural habitat of ''R. drummondhayi'' is forest, at altitudes ...

''.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Drummond-Hay, p. 76).

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