Born in Karachi, he became a curator of a natural history museum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In 1891 at the age of eighteen, Butler traveled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a tea-planter, which he abandoned to become a scientific collector.
[1] Butler became a scientific collector after moving to Ceylon, collecting specimens for the Marsden and Tring museums.
[1] In 1915 Butler returned to England, living in St. Leonard's Park near Horsham for the rest of his life.
The last several years of his life were spent in poor health, and he was unable to attend any meetings of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1932 onward.