The Short-eared Owl book by Bryan Benn

Page last updated on 2 August 2024

Book title, author, publisher and ISBN

Book title Short-eared Owls; An extensive study of Short-eared Owls in Britain

Author Bryan Benn

Publisher Bryan Benn

ISBN 978-1-8384800-0-4

Contact the Author

This simple web page provides a copy and paste of yeti.in.kent@gmail.com or a link to the same email to contact Kent Yeti, also known as Bryan Benn! That email is to help publicise and sell copies of my Short-eared Owl book. The book has been written by me, and taken to a high quality design by Nicola Liddiard of bigorangedoor, a professional designer who has done work for a number of top publishing companies. It has been printed to a high standard in Britain by J W Ruddocks Ltd of Lincoln a company whose origins go back to 1880.

This web page also gives a basic preview of the book and that follows below the text. But first, how to purchase a copy.

Price and availability

This section covering the ways in which the book can be purchased was updated on 2 August 2024

1. NHBS Ltd (Formerly Natural History Book Service)

The book is kept in stock by NHBS and can be purchased from them online at NHBS at the price of £34.99 per book, plus the additional cost of postage and packaging.

NHBS handle sales from outside of the UK.

The above link to my book at NHBS includes some details of the book, along with two 'media' reviews.

2. From Elmley NNR

There are two ways for UK purchasers to buy the book via Elmley NNR, the first is for online purchase via Elmley NNR This is at the price of £35 per book, plus the additional cost of postage and packaging. Online purchases from outside the UK can only be made directly from NHBS or myself, see below for both of those.

The book may also be available to visitors to the reserve from the office at Elmley NNR at a reduced price of £30 per copy. It is my intention to hold the price at this lower level for some time to come, in recognition of the continuing support and interest in my study and the book shown by Elmley Friends, along with day and overnight vistors to the reserve. Elmley plan to put their share of net income from sales of this book to a further conservation project on the reserve. It is important to note that Friends and day visitors will only be able to make such purchases during the hours they have normal access to the reserve.

3. From myself by post to buyers within the UK

Please email me via copy and paste of yeti.in.kent@gmail.com or a link to the same email with your full postal address and I will provide details of how to make the payment to my PayPal account of £35 per copy of the book plus the additional cost of postage and packaging, which is currently £5.

If payment via PayPal is not available to any prospective purchaser within the UK, please note that other methods of payment are available for purchases made via NHBS or online purchase via Elmley NNR

I am using Royal Mail's Tracked 24 and Signed service and Royal Mail will use your email to give some advance notification of delivery. Royal Mail state that such emails will not be used for marketing purposes.

From myself by post to buyers outside of the UK

Please email me via copy and paste of yeti.in.kent@gmail.com or a link to the same email with your full postal address and I will quote a price, in UK£, US$ or Euros€ for the cost of £35 per copy plus the additional cost of postage and packaging. I will also provide details of how to make the payment to my PayPal account. That payment can be in UK£, US$ or Euros€

If payment via PayPal is not available to any prospective purchaser from outside the UK, please note that other methods of payment are available for purchases made via NHBS, see paragraph 1 above.

Initial feedback on the book

This paragraph was updated on 2 August 2024

Initial comments from some of the first sales of my book are below. I am still receiving similar comments from purchasers both inside and outside the UK. It is heartwarming to know I can share my love of these owls with others.

On 23 October 2021 CD wrote: I have read a huge amount of bird books, but can only describe yours as outstanding. It is a work of art, and is the only book I have seen covering SEOs in such detail.

On 27 October 2021 MH wrote: It really is an impressive and beautiful body of work.

On 29 October 2021 DC wrote: Speechless, and can't thank you enough.

On 13 November 2021 DK (Netherlands, 3 copies purchased) wrote: very fast shipping, nice personal cards written by author and great help with customs handling.

On 9 January 2022 RB wrote: I wanted to congratulate you on writing and publishing this absolutely stunning book. The photographs are outstanding and your love for your subject shines through. I have many natural history books and I'm a complete bibliophile so when I say yours stands out, this is an acknowledgement of the quality and depth of research that has gone into this book. I can see from looking through it that it is very comprehensive and beautifully produced!

On 11 January 2022 MT wrote: Absolutely superb, info, photos etc top notch! You can always tell when a book has been written by someone who's been out in the field and studied the subject in detail as you obviously have. Congratulations on an excellent piece of work.

The book; statistics

This paragraph was updated on 29 October 2021

It is a hard-covered book of 432 pages, with the cover design laminated onto that hard cover. It is a little under A4 size; Crown Quarto, 189 mm x 246 mm portrait style. It comprises 11 chapters which, with the five appendices, is just under 116,000 words and includes more than 360 photos. Those photos include 55 full page, 13 as full double page spreads, and five that are partly double page spreads. The book also includes 31 tables, nine diagrams, seven charts and five maps.

I have a life long hate of extensive appendices, so a lot of tabular information is in the body of the book alongside the relevant photos and text. The five actual appendices are limited to naming the locations I have been to in Britain (68 so far); how I have worked in my study to eliminate any distubance to the owls in my watching and photography; those who have helped me in this study; a set of measurement conversion tables from metric to imperial (the book is metric throughout), and, finally, a list of books, documents and published studies that I have referred to.

The next stages in my study

This paragraph was updated on 2 August 2024

As always planned, my study of Short-eared Owls continues. I am recording any significant findings and observations in revised drafts of a number of chapters with no certain plans yet as to how I will use those in the future. That new work will, as well as recording any significant additions to the current book chapters, also cover ways in which I can record and present, in more detail, action from the hours when most Short-eared Owls are usually active; between sunset and sunrise.

Bryan Benn, (aka Kentyeti Cantium Gigantanthropus), 2 August 2024

Copyright

Copyright © of the entire content of this web site, kentyeti.co.uk including the photos and book content reproduced below, belongs to Bryan Benn. To reinforce that, the copyright notice inside the front of the book is reproduced below. That applies equally here to all the book content reproduced below.

Book previews.

Below are some screen grabs of parts of my Short-eared Owl book which give an idea of what the full book looks like.

First, a low resolution copy of the book cover. The cover is laminated/fixed onto the hard cover, and not just placed around the cover as a dust sheet is. I much prefer that. So there is not lots about me inside the flap of a dust jacket, as appears in some books. There is enough about why I wrote the book in the Foreword. I want the focus to be on the owls, and not on me.

Short-eared Owl book cover

And now pages from inside my book. All are low resolution copies of the first two pages of the frontpiece, the full contents page, and just the first two pages of some of the chapters, or, in some cases, pages from inside a chapter.