William Edwin Brooks (30 July 1828 near Dublin, Ireland – 18 January 1899 in Mount Forest, Ontario) was a civil engineer in India and an ornithologist.

[1] His father was a noted engineer William Alexander Brooks (25 March 1802 – 26 January 1877) who had worked on the Panama Canal with Ferdinand de Lesseps during which project he died at Paya near the Isthmus of Darien.

His wife Mary Jane Renwick (married at Calcutta, 1859) from Newcastle upon Tyne was frail and suffered from poor health in India.

His vast collection of bird specimens is at the British Museum and during his career in India, he corresponded actively with other ornithologists in the region, notably Allan Octavian Hume.

His third son Allan Brooks, named after Hume, was sent to study in England and during his stay in Northumberland he trained under his father's close friend, John Hancock.