Wood Brinker, a graduate of Santa Cruz High School, has had an interest in birds for as long as she can remember.<\/p>\n
![\"Bolinas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/MIJ-L-BOOK-COL-0622-02_ef54ab.jpg\")
Bolinas resident Sophie Wood Brinker is the author and illustrator of Heyday Books’ “Birds of Santa Cruz.” (Courtesy of Sophie Wood Brinker)<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents would take me kayaking, and we always had a field guide laminated and printed out when we would kayak,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was one of my first entry points into birding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wood Brinker studied peace and global studies at Earlham College in Indiana and graduated from the science illustration program at CSU Monterey Bay, where she fell in love with illustrating science and wildlife, particularly birds. Now residing in Bolinas, she was connected with Marthine Satris, associate publisher at Heyday. The Berkeley-based publishing company publishes books on a variety of topics, including social justice and the environment. One of its latest endeavors is the \u201cBirds of California,\u201d a guide to birds that make up different parts of the Golden State. Past books have included \u201cBirds of Berkeley,\u201d \u201cBirds of Lake Merritt,\u201d \u201cBirds of Point Reyes\u201d and \u201cBirds of the California Delta.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been so wonderful to work with Heyday,\u201d Wood Brinker said. \u201cThey\u2019re so incredible to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout \u201cBirds of Santa Cruz,\u201d Wood Brinker details about 25 different species of birds Santa Cruzans have frequently seen wading through watersheds, congregating at beaches or simply perched in trees. Among the featured birds are California quail, turkey vultures, Anna\u2019s hummingbirds, red-shouldered hawks, mourning doves, violet-green swallows, Brandt\u2019s cormorants and great blue herons.<\/p>\n
![\"(Courtesy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/MIJ-L-BOOK-COL-0622-02.jpg\")
(Courtesy of Heyday Books)<\/p>\n
Picking a favorite is nearly impossible for Wood Brinker, but she found the brown pelican particularly fascinating, especially their diving techniques. When they see fish from above, they fold in their wings and shoot downward while special pockets along their necks and stomachs inflate to help break their falls. She also likes their \u201ccommunity organizing\u201d abilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think about the way that they fly together and also the community organizing that happened to save them from (synthetic pesticide) DDT,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Wood Brinker took a lot of inspiration for the illustrations from her grandmother\u2019s birding books.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe lived in Pacific Grove, and connecting to her through writing this book was really special,\u201d she said. \u201cShe passed away, and it felt really meaningful to look through her notes in the birding books as a way to write this book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, Wood Brinker relied on advice from birdwatching friends and she did an illustrative exhibit for the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History called \u201cFrom the Shoreline to the Summit,\u201d depicting the various habitats throughout Santa Cruz County and wildlife therein, and worked off that.<\/p>\n
Wood Brinker hopes readers will learn more about the different types of birds they see every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted writing this book to be a connecting point for people to get to know their winged neighbors,\u201d she said. \u201cBirds are really such a beautiful part of our everyday lives, even if we\u2019re running errands or sitting on a bench on West Cliff or looking out a window, we\u2019re always in a relationship with birds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Lifestyles Editor Colleen Bidwill contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The phrase \u201cbirds of a feather flock together\u201d is especially true in California, and those birds come in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[87956,7798,149837,7,971,992,180,993,266,143,145,144,1727,420,136078],"class_list":["post-369595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-authors","tag-birds","tag-bolinas","tag-california","tag-lifestyle","tag-marin-county","tag-newsletter","tag-north-bay","tag-northern-california","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-outdoors","tag-things-to-do","tag-west-marin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}