Calling all photographers! It's that time of year again: we are asking all of the slough's shutterbugs - from amateurs to professionals - to send in your photographs for the 2012 Calendar Contest.

Each year ESF collects great shots of the watershed, from the sea lions at Moss Landing Harbor to the fog kissed ridgelines, to showcase the beauty of this special place. Winning shots will become part of the 2012 ESF calendar, and some may even be featured on our website or used to help promote the wonders of Elkhorn Slough and the importance of conserving this amazing diverse place.

If you have captured a breathtaking vista, a majestic wildlife scene, or some other scenario that makes you think, "now this is what the Elkhorn Slough is all about," send the shot our way. It just might make next year's calendar!

To submit a photo, please visit our website, where you can find more details and official contest rules.

ESF works hard to protect large areas of land for many reasons - from improving water quality in the slough to providing wildlife habitat.

Throughout the years, we have managed to purchase land that had once been under different ownership. When this situation occurs, one of our tasks is to remove the fencing had been a barrier between neighbors. This fencing tends to be old barbed wire, which not only impedes wildlife mobility - it can injure animals as they move through the hillsides above the slough. Removing the old fences creates a wildlife corridor - a connection between habitats that have been separated by human activities.

Last month volunteers from CTB McGraw Hill removed fencing between ESF properties, creating new corridors. Despite the threat of rusty old wires and poison oak, volunteers happily donned safety equipment and jumped right in. As they worked, one volunteer noted that a thin trail that lead to a small break in the fence. "Seeing that this one small space in the fence was already being used by animals really brought what we were doing into focus. If the animals were seeking this spot out, they would have so much more mobility once we had taken the whole structure down!"

All in all, more than 1,000 feet of fencing were removed in just one day! ESF is grateful for the help of its volunteers - and we believe the wildlife we work to protect is grateful as well.

If you hike the trails at the Reserve you might notice that there are more than a hundred hay bales piled up at Whistlestop Lagoon, about 150 feet north of the South Marsh trail. In October, ESNERR stewardship staff will spread them out over the mowed field there.

Why? This project is a direct result of a 2009 grass seed experiment at Whistlestop, and an attempt to restore native meadow barley to land overrun by invasive plants. We expect to replace more than an acre of non-native poison hemlock and mustard with native grass, which is known to naturally grow above Elkhorn Slough's salt marshes.

In 2009, ESNERR's stewardship coordinator conducted an experiment to see if invasive plants could be replaced with native grasses without the need for time-consuming seed collection. ESNERR's Andrea Woolfolk worked closely with ESF's stewardship program to collect meadow barley hay from ESF land. After scraping off topsoil known to be laden with an invasive seedbank, UCSC students helped apply one of four treatments was applied to twenty plots of land by Whistelstop Lagoon. Some plots were an experimental control that had nothing done to them; some had barley seeds added to them; some had barley hay laid over them; and some had both seeds and hay.

After two years of observation, the plots that received treatment are all doing equally well, while the control plots are doing only about half as well. Plots with hay seem to be doing a better job of deterring invasive regrowth. This is great news - it is very labor intensive to get clean seed for even small areas, but ESF's meadow barley hay is available in large quantities. We are happy that it may be possible to restore land near one of ESNERR's most popular trails efficiently with this simple but effective restoration technique.

There is a new and unusual visitor in the Elkhorn Slough - a beautiful ring-necked pheasant. This bird, the male of the species, has not been noted in the watershed before and is believed to be an escaped pet. However, the slough is a very accommodating environment for our feathered friends.

Typically, pheasants are found in habitats ranging from agricultural land and marshes to woodlands and brushy groves. With the watershed's plethora of farm land, expansive oak woodlands, and precious marshes, it is natural that this bird would want to settle down in the slough. As an omnivorous bird, you are likely to spot him feeding on seeds, grasses, and insects found throughout our protected lands.

If you are hoping to spot this creature's gorgeous iridescent feathers or striking red face, keep your eyes low as you walk the Reserve's trails. Pheasants nest and forage on the ground, sometimes even taking dust baths. And keep an ear out too! When the ring-necked pheasant is startled it produces a hoarse honking - an alarm call that is hard to miss.

You can follow us on twitter for the latest news and coolest sightings at the slough!