[1][2] Hugh was the first son of Major Fuller Whistler of the Highland Light Infantry and Gwenllian Annie (née Robinson) and was born at Mablethorpe in 1889.
His younger brother Ralfe Allen Fuller Whistler (24 July 1895 - 28 April 1917) followed after his father and joined the Highland Light Infantry while Hugh went to serve with the Indian police mainly in the Punjab.
He began to correspond with Claud Buchanan Ticehurst and, when on leave in England in 1910, he visited Grove House at Lowestoft and was introduced to scientific ornithology.
He published extensively in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, making notes on the occurrence and on the distributions of geographic plumage variations.
Around 1925 a plan was made by W S Millard, Sir George Lowndes and F J Mitchell to produce an illustrated guide to the birds of India for beginners.
[2][7] In this work he foresaw the value of popularizing observation-based ornithology: The day is now over in which it was necessary to collect large series of skins and eggs in India.
Keep full notes for a year on the birds of your station, noting those that are resident and the times of arrival and departure, comparative abundance and scarcity of all the migratory kinds; and you will have made a contribution to ornithology that will in the measure of its accuracy and fullness be a help to every other worker.Whistler lived at Battle, East Sussex during his retirement, where he was a Justice of the Peace.
He made one trip to India in 1928 as a guest of Admiral Hubert Lynes with the intention of studying the birds of Kashmir.
Lynes was recalled to England and insisted that Whistler and Bertram Beresford Osmaston complete the bird survey.