Rev. Henry Baker Tristram was a British clergyman, Biblical scholar and ornithologist. He was born in Alnwick, Northumberland, and studied at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1846 and from 1873 served as Residentiary Canon of Durham Cathedral, but due to ill health (tuberculosis) spent most of his life in warmer climes.

Tristram travelled widely, visiting the Near East, Japan and the Caribbean, where he recorded observations on natural history and made collections, especially of birds, but also gathering some plants and molluscs. He served as secretary to the governor of Bermuda from 1847-1849 and went on to explore Algeria, Tunisia and the Sahara Desert in the 1850s. He went to Palestine in 1858, 1863 and 1872, where he studied the flora and fauna and explored localities named in the Bible. He travelled once more to Palestine in 1881, and also visited the Lebanon, Iraq and Armenia.

Based on his experiences, Tristram was able to publish many works on natural history, travel and the Bible lands. His works included The Great Sahara (1860), The Natural History of the Bible (1867) and The Flora and Fauna of Palestine (1884). He published many papers in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London and The Ibis, and was an early proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution. His Rambles in Japan appeared in 1895, following a journey made to visit his daughter, working as a missionary in Osaka.

Tristram was a founding member of the British Ornithologists' Union and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1868. Several birds have been named in his honour, including Tristram's Warbler and Tristram's Starling. Tristram's bird skins were sold to Liverpool Museum, while the British Museum, Cambridge and Oxford Universities received his botanical collections.

Sources:
R.A. Baker, 1996, "'The Great Gun of Durham' - Canon Henry Baker Tristram, F.R.S. (1822–1906). An outline of his life, collections and contribution to natural history", Archives of Natural History, 23: 327-341.