Phil has been interested in birds since the demise of the steam trains when he was about 11. Born in Southampton, England
He first came to Australia in 1977, but got side-tracked, and spent the next twenty years living and birding in Nigeria, Zambia, the Falkland Islands and Papua New Guinea.

He is a well-known tour leader, working for Field Guides Inc. and Sicklebill Safaris, and is one of Australia’s foremost birders. He is also one of the most experienced New Guinea guides with many tours led there ever since 1998.In 2017 he published Birds of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago and Bougainville for Lynx Edicions.

In 2019 came the photographic guide A Field Guide to the Birds of Far North Queensland for New Holland a joint collaboration with fellow Sicklebill guide Jun Matsui who provided the majority of the photographs. In 2020 he published a monograph on Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds for Helm. The New Guinea guide and the Birds of Paradise book both received Whitley awards. He has also written species and family accounts for three volumes of the Handbook of the Birds of the World and is involved as an advisor with the IOC and their World Checklist and Recommended English Names of Birds projects.

Special interests include field identification, vocalisations, taxonomy and bird distributions. He has been guiding occasionally since his African days becoming full time in 1998 by side-stepping the joys of being an international school principal which, he found, was seriously impeding his birding. He leads several tours a year to Australia, PNG, the Pacific Region, Asia and Africa.