Photo for The Inter-Mountain Visitors from other states pass through Elkins during the holidays — including about 100 ring-billed gulls taking a break at noon Monday in the Walmart parking lot. Shoppers bundled in heavy jackets and coats were startled to see the flock of birds, usually associated with much warmer climates, looping through the air or searching for morsels of food on the ground during snow flurries. Division of Natural Resources ornithologist Richard Bailey said the gulls ‘can get pushed around a little bit’ by weather systems, especially in this polar-vortex year, and the reflectivity of puddles on the pavement may appear to the birds like a body of water. Sightings of gulls in Elkins during winter may occur every couple of years or so. ‘But it is still a sight and something you don’t see every day,’ the DNR official said.