Wayland Town Crier 8/6/09: In search of the mysterious and graceful nighthawk. Almost every evening at dusk between mid-August and mid-September, veteran birder Hank Norwood slips out of his Wayland home armed with binoculars and telescopes in search of the mysterious and graceful nighthawk migrating to its winter quarters in the Southern Hemisphere. He’s joined by scores of others like him scattered around open areas in adjacent towns and as far out as Greenfield and Keene, N.H., to the west, Concord, N.H., to the north and Milbury to the south. They call themselves the SuAsCo/Nashua Rivers & Beyond Nighthawk Survey, and they are about to start their annual sky watch again next week. To kick off the event and encourage involvement in this area, the Friends of the Assabet River and Oxbow National Wildlife refuges, Sudbury Valley Trustees, Organization for the Assabet River, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are jointly sponsoring an identification and surveying briefing next week for those who would like to be part of this citizen science project. This year’s survey runs from Sunday, August 9 to Monday, September 10. The local briefing will be held on Thursday, August 13, 7-8:30pm at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters in Sudbury, located at 73 Weir Hill Road. Anyone who is interested, especially newcomers to nighthawk surveying, will be welcome. Please e-mail for more information or to sign up.