I spy with my little eye

Trail cam captures Liberty Canyon wildlife




LIVE FROM AGOURA—Sherry Ferber, insert, a trail camera operator, finally captures the “holy grail” of nature pix with this shot of a mountain lion, identified by the National Park Service as P-65. Courtesy photos

LIVE FROM AGOURA—Sherry Ferber, insert, a trail camera operator, finally captures the “holy grail” of nature pix with this shot of a mountain lion, identified by the National Park Service as P-65. Courtesy photos

A golden eagle launching into flight. A coyote smiling in the sun. A doe peering into the camera for a one-eyed close-up.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for trail camera operator Sherry Ferber, they’re full of a thousand birds.

For the past two years, the Liberty Canyon resident and wildlife advocate has documented Agoura’s native fauna through the lens of a trail camera she has posted with permission on private property bordering open space near Malibu Creek State Park and the proposed location of the Liberty Canyon wildlife crossing.

Ferber, a retired fourth-grade teacher, leaves the motion-sensing camera in place for months at a time before checking the memory card to see what she’s captured.

Most of the time it’s deer, coyotes, owls, skunks and the occasional bobcat. But in the last batch of photos from December— which included over 3,000 images—Ferber caught sight of the holy grail of Southern California trail cam photos: a mountain lion.

The blurry image shows a large feline with a dark band around its neck, the telltale sign of a National Park Service tracking collar. Ferber said when she first saw the thumbnail of the photo, she began to shake with excitement. After two years of running her trail cam, she had given up on the hope of photographing a cougar.

“I was beyond excited,” the 69-year-old said. “It was an amazing thrill.”

NPS officials identified the mountain lion as P-65, a female cougar they have tracked since 2018. The big cat survived the Woolsey fire and two 101 Freeway crossings before giving birth to a litter of kittens last year.

Ferber refers to the process of gathering digital images as “camera trapping,” which is more humane than conventional trapping, where animals are physically captured and often killed.

She became involved in local environmental issues over a decade ago when she learned about the work of Poison Free Malibu, and later started volunteering with the National Wildlife Foundation.

She eventually joined the effort to build a wildlife crossing in Liberty Canyon to provide animals a safe passageway over the 101 Freeway. To support the effort and spread awareness, Ferber co-wrote a series of illustrated books on P-22, Griffith Park’s world-famous resident mountain lion, with proceeds going to Save LA Cougars, the campaign to build the crossing.

As the $88-million project inches closer to becoming a reality, Beth Pratt, California director for the National Wildlife Federation, said data from trail cams like Ferber’s will provide a baseline for measuring the impact of the crossing and how it changes animals’ behavior.

She said trail-cam photos help urbanites and suburbanites form an emotional investment in wildlife. She cited the famous photo of P-22 in front of the Hollywood sign as an example.

“You can have all the science in the world about how many species have gone extinct but what matters is getting people to care and see the lives of animals in a way scientific papers don’t express,” Pratt said.

Trail cameras, which typically can cost anywhere from $50 to a few hundred dollars depending on the quality, have become a popular option for amateur wildlife watchers. Some cameras will upload video directly to a smartphone or computer; others require physically removing the hardware.

Ferber learned much of what she knows from Johanna Turner, the Reseda resident behind the Cougar Magic website that features crystal-clear high-resolution images of the Santa Monica Mountains’ apex predator.

After Ferber told Turner about getting a shot of the puma’s pose, Turner posted on Facebook that Ferber needed a round of applause. She said she was just as excited as Ferber.

“In a poetic moment of trail- cam justice, a spot she had picked very early on and stuck with through wind triggers, dead batteries, rattlesnakes and wildfire, she has gotten her lion,” Turner wrote.

A sound effects editor by trade, Turner said she hopes trail cams inspire people to think about wildlife in a different way, especially predators like mountain lions and bobcats, which are often seen as scary, dangerous and undesirable.

“When you see them with a trail cam they look calm and natural,” she said. “When a person gets to see an animal that way instead of running into it on a trail when it was defensive and snarly, then your whole image of this world changes from us versus them to ‘Oh, how beautiful. Look at this animal.’”

Pratt said what she loves about Ferber is her sense of place and the way she has embraced the canyon where she lives. And her passion is contagious. Pratt said that when Ferber was still teaching she would bring her students to rallies for the wildlife crossing. Pratt said those students are now in college and some remain involved in supporting the bridge.

“I think it’s a testament to not just her passion for wildlife but realizing the importance of passing that on to her students,” Pratt said.

For Ferber, her photographic victory is reassurance that Liberty Canyon is exactly where she needs to be.

Before moving to the canyon on the eastern border of Agoura, Ferber didn’t hike. Now she takes almost daily trips into the open space at the end of her block. It’s a neighborhood that she is looking forward to sharing with more wildlife once the freeway crossing is installed.

“I have moments of absolute clarity and acceptance that I am where I belong,” she said.