Phil Palmer

Phil first visited Chukotka with Dr Evgeny Syroechovskiy as it became obvious that the spoon-billed sandpiper was heading towards extinction. Since then he has helped Evgeny and Christoph survey other parts of Eastern Russia as well as studying spoon-billed sandpipers in China.

Phil works full-time as bird tour leader for Bird Holidays in Leeds and undertakes these expeditions as part of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force. He funds himself and says it has been difficult to visit as often as he would like. He has made various discoveries along the way, including many vagrant birds in Siberia. If asked, he would guess that his best find was a western meadowlark near Provedenya in 2004.