Whooping cranes - those endangered, big white birds - have been making appearances all over North Dakota lately.

One crane, probably a sub-adult, was confirmed Wednesday morning on the "far east end of Long Lake National Wildlife Refuge," said Gregg Knutsen, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist at the refuge south of Moffit.

A landowner in the vicinity also reported seeing two other whoopers earlier in the week, but Knutsen, the state's whooping crane coordinator, so far has been unable to confirm the sighting.

Four cranes, three adults and a juvenile, were spotted four miles east of Palermo on Saturday. Todd Frerichs, the manager at Lostwood NWR, identified the birds as whooping cranes.

Frerichs said Wednesday he had been unable to go out again to see if the cranes still were hanging around. He also warned hunters to keep an eye out for whooping cranes.

"That area does have some scattered groups of sandhills and swans," he said. "Anybody hunting should pay close attention to what the game is so they don't accidentally take a whooper."

There have been several other whooper sightings, although none had been confirmed:

* Two pairs of whoopers, one pair in northwestern Kidder County and the other pair in northeastern Burleigh County in the past couple of days.

"Potentially, they are the same two birds," Knutsen said.

* Two whoopers also came into a sandhill crane hunter's decoy spread near Douglas on Tuesday.

"They were ahead of a flock of sandhills," said Mike Szymanski, a migratory bird biologist with the state Game and Fish Department, who took the report.

* Szymanski also received a report of four whoopers spotted on Saturday "up by Devils Lake."

* A single bird also was reported near Leeds last week.

An estimated 234 whooping cranes - one of North America's rarest birds - are making the 2,500-mile trip to their winter home on the Texas Gulf Coast. The flock is the largest in North America.

The one whooper confirmed at Long Lake is roosting in an isolated, inaccessible area of the refuge and flying out to feed on private land, Knutsen said. It also is mixed in with sandhill cranes and snow and Canada geese, Knutsen added.

Knutsen too warned hunters to keep an eye out for whoopers that could be mixed in with geese or sandhill cranes.

Whether the Long Lake whooper - or whoopers - stick around is anyone's guess.

"If it's 80, and there's not a wind out of the northwest, there is potential for the birds to hang around for a couple of days," Knutsen said.

(Reach reporter Richard Hinton at 250-8256 or outdoors@bismarcktribune.net.)