The annual southward migration of rare whooping cranes is headed for the homestretch, but reported sightings have been up lately in northwestern North Dakota

"The past week and a half has been pretty hot. There are a quite a few (reported sightings) in that stretch from Parshall up to Stanley," Mike Szymanski, a migratory bird biologist with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, said Thursday.

Although none of those sightings has been confirmed, Szymanski called them "pretty good, accurate descriptions from people who have had sightings in the past."

One of the reported endangered whooping cranes was wearing a green leg band. The color indicated the crane was banded in 1987 or '88, Szymanski said.

The latest credible report came on Saturday, with four adult whooping cranes spotted near Ryder, which is southwest of Minot.

Although most reports list adult birds, there were a few reports with young cranes mixed in, Szymanski said.

There have been four confirmed reports of whooping crane sightings in North Dakota so far this migration. The latest was four of the big, white birds near Stanley that hung around long enough to be spotted by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee. The three other sightings involved single whooping cranes.

An estimated 91 adults and 10 juvenile whooping cranes already have settled in at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and adjacent areas on the Texas Gulf coast, a 6½-hour aerial census conducted Wednesday revealed.

That's 98 more of the endangered white birds than a week ago, when biologist Tom Stehn did the season's first count.

In his latest post-flight report, Stehn, who is the USFWS national whooping crane coordinator, said the migration appears to be ahead of average. Typically, the last few whooping cranes straggle into the Aransas area just in time for Christmas.

Favorable weather conditions, including a strong cold front earlier in the week, helped push in those cranes, Stehn wrote in his report.