By Kimberly Gentry Photos By Doc Ellen
It was a blue-sky day at Jordan Lake, perfect for sitting outside. Dr. Ellen Tinsley, more commonly known as Doc Ellen, relaxed in a rocking chair overlooking the water. As Tinsley admired the water and surrounding wildlife, she soon noticed a tiny spider walking along the edge of her chair’s armrest.
Tinsley smiled, studied the spider and then softly brushed it over the side. The spider rappelled down on its silk and then started climbing back up. “Oh, now stay there,” she said playfully while watching the spider, which eventually changed course and scurried away.
Spiders and all of nature’s creatures bring a smile to Tinsley’s face. A retired veterinarian turned wildlife photographer, Tinsley is a common sight at Jordan Lake as a regular visitor and long-time volunteer with the bald eagle monitoring program.
For this visit, Tinsley was sitting next to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ office at the lake’s dam. As she discussed her life, Tinsley occasionally paused mid-sentence, grabbed her camera and snapped a picture of a nearby bird. She eagerly offered context to what was happening around us. “See that bird on the fence,” she enthusiastically pointed out to me. “That’s the momma, she’s helping her baby.”
Occasionally, a ranger stopped by to say, “Hello.” Tinsley’s common reply to their greeting was, “Oh, half ornery,” accompanied with a chuckle and a grin. The pair would then talk about the lake and share funny quips for a few minutes. It was clear, Jordan Lake is a special place to Tinsley, a second home of sorts. Her affection for the lake is understandable. After a devastating, career-ending car accident, wildlife photography, especially of the lake’s birds, gave Tinsley a renewed lease on life.
“It’s given me a reason to get up in the morning,” said Tinsley, who lives in Fuquay-Varina. “It’s given me an outlet to share what I know.”
In 2007, Tinsley was at a stoplight when a tractor trailer driver, who wasn’t paying attention, failed to stop in time and hit her from behind. The blow sent her truck careening into oncoming traffic and the path of another tractor trailer. Thankfully, Tinsley survived the accident, but it caused a seismic shift in the direction of her life. “It turned my life upside down,” she said, explaining her numerous injuries required multiple surgeries. For the next two and half years, getting better and physical therapy was Tinsley’s sole focus.
Tinsley had gone from an active life of running 5K races, swimming regularly and working with horses to an inability to work or be in the outdoors she loved so dearly. “I handled horses all the time. I was extremely agile,” she said. “I didn’t have any mobility issues.”
Prior to the accident, Tinsley lived her passion as a large animal veterinarian, primarily equine. She had a special touch with horses, just like her father who worked with animals on his childhood farm. Despite her love of horses and dreams of a career with animals, Tinsley never actually thought vet school was in her future. The timing just wasn’t there.
Tinsley started college in 1965, but life’s twists and turns delayed her completing those studies. She went back to school in the 1970s at Craven Community College with a possible journalism career in mind. Despite being naturally drawn to math and science and tutoring other students in those subjects, it took the encouragement of her chemistry professor to open her eyes to the possibility of being a vet.
“He knew that I was helping tutor in math classes and algebra classes, and he had a couple of students in the chemistry class that he felt could make it, they just needed some help making it. So, he asked me if I would tutor them. By the end of the semester he asked me, ‘Why aren’t you majoring in this? It’s obvious watching you, this is what you really love to do. If you had your druthers, what would you rather do?’ I said, ‘Oh, I want to be a veterinarian!’”
When he asked why she wasn’t pursuing vet school, Tinsley, who was not the typical age of a college student, had a discouraging answer: “I’m too old.” She laughed and then told me, “Well that lasted about two heartbeats.”
And so, a new path was forged. With self-determination and encouragement from her professors, Tinsley soon transferred to East Carolina University. Tinsley was living in New Bern and drove an hour and a half each day to eventually complete a major in biology. The next step was N.C. State’s College of Veterinary Medicine where Tinsley graduated in 1993 at the age of 42. She and a fellow classmate were the oldest graduates to complete the program at that time. Soon, Tinsley proudly opened Hoof Beats Veterinary Practice in Willow Springs.
Fifteen years later, instead of visits to farms and checking on horses, Tinsley was recovering from the car accident and in the grind of physical therapy. Little did she know her life was about to change again.
“I was sick and tired of physical therapy,” she said. “Physical therapy hurts! At the end of two and half years, I walked in and said, ‘I’ve had it! I’m not coming back.’ I had essentially been inside for two and half years since the accident.”
Tinsley said her physical therapist remained quiet, looked at her for a minute or two and then finally asked if she would please come back one more time.
Tinsley chuckled and leaned toward me adding, “Well, my momma always taught me, if somebody says, ‘Please…’ So I said, ‘Alright, one more time.’ I walked in the next week, and he had in his hands one of those point and shoot cameras. He asked, ‘You got one of these at home?’”
She did and he prescribed a new kind of therapy. Tinsley’s voice quickened with enthusiasm as she told the rest of the story.
“He said, ‘I want you to go home right now and don’t stop until you pick that camera up and you go out the door and you go until you don’t have any more film in it and then you go back in and you find some more film and you go back out.”
Her voice trailed off and a smile crossed her face. “He knew what I needed.” Tinsley explained that although she had dabbled in photography as a younger woman, she really had not explored it in decades. And, she had never mentioned this past hobby to her physical therapist. “He knew I was missing the outdoors,” she said. “There’s no two ways about it. I’m an outdoors person.”
Loving the outdoors is in Tinsley’s roots. Both her parents were from rural, farming backgrounds and passed on their appreciation for plants, nature and animals to their children. The accident had turned Tinsley’s outdoor life into an indoor one.
“I about went nuts!” she said. “Outdoors is where I need to be. He understood where I needed to be. He knew I was a large animal vet.”
To Tinsley’s surprise, using the camera was a distraction from her arm and shoulder pain. “My physical therapist was right; I went through the door and I picked [the camera] up and my arm was screaming bloody murder at me. But he was right. Once I put it in both hands and got everything still enough and went to look through the camera…an hour later I realized I hadn’t thought about my arm. He knew I needed to be occupied and distracted. He knew that it was going to make me use my arm.”
Photography did help. Tinsley was outdoors, actively moving in new ways and engaging her curiosity. Then someone made a fortuitous suggestion — take pictures at Jordan Lake. Tinsley took her first pictures at the lake in 2010 and has been in love with its serenity and wildlife ever since. She dove deeper into photography teaching herself all that she could and gaining skills with progressively more advanced equipment.
Tinsley was almost wistful when talking about the first time she visited the lake. “When I pulled into Poe’s Ridge, I felt like I was finally somewhere close to home…somewhere where I was outdoors.”
When asked why Jordan Lake is so special to her versus anywhere else, Tinsley’s answer was simple: “Because there’s peace here. Lord only knows, I needed some peace.”
Among her early subjects was a great blue heron she frequently saw and named Stumpy. She had such affection for Stumpy she even wrote a picture book about him. Tinsley also regularly observed a bald eagle pair starting their life together and building their nest (bald eagles mate for life). Tinsley named the couple Kate and Petruchio, after the famous pair from Shakespeare’s play, “Taming of the Shrew.” Why? “Kate is definitely the shrew,” she joked about the eagle’s behavior toward her mate.
The birds, the trees, the water, Tinsley was capturing it all through her lens. And, when it came to animal life, especially the bald eagles, she was also capturing her observations in extensive field notes. She meticulously recorded their behavior and activities, always noting the days and times.
“I’m a scientist. I’m a biologist and I was taught to do field notes. Not to mention I was taught to do medical records. I’m taking all of these notes, all of these records.”
After about a month of observing Kate and Petruchio, Tinsley met a ranger with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who managed the lake’s bald eagle monitoring program. The ranger, impressed with her notes, recruited her then and there and she’s been doing it ever since. Tinsley currently monitors three nests, including two from their very beginning.
“It gives me something back. I’m doing records again, I’m taking that knowledge that I was taught as a veterinarian, and the knowledge my daddy and mom taught me. I’m using that knowledge to make records that, hopefully, someday will mean something to somebody.”
Tinsley’s parents encouraged their children to understand the “why” in life, to figure out problems and investigate to find answers. So, for Tinsley, studying the lake’s wildlife traces back to her natural curiosity and love of sharing knowledge.
“I love to teach. Most veterinarians love to teach,” she said. “We love puzzles. We want to figure out what’s going on [with an animal] so we can help make it better. So, for me to have a purpose — oh, man, now I am not only watching these eagles for my benefit, I’m going to get to share this information with other people…Very exciting.”
Tinsley shares her bald eagle knowledge with fellow enthusiasts and monitors, as well as through social media and educational talks. Her veterinarian background and field work also inform her photography, a method she tries to impart to her students.
“I’m interested in the behavior of the animal as much as I am in the photograph,” she said, adding that’s the idea behind her business name, “Bird-Brained Photography.”
Birds, especially bald eagles, are among Tinsley’s most frequent subjects and it helps to sort of think like they do. “It does take a sensing about it,” she explained. “You have to sense what that bird is going to do.”
Every bird has a certain way it gets ready to take off or dive for a fish, she explained, so if you know those cues, you know just when to capture the perfect shot. And Tinsley does. For instance, there’s her vibrant picture of the moment a bald eagle has just caught a fish in its impressive talons. Or another of an osprey shaking its feathers dry after emerging from a dive and each droplet in the spray is so distinct it seems to glow as if it’s jumping off the image.
When talking to Tinsley it’s easy to get a sense of her determination and how that factors into her photography. “It’s challenging to photograph a bird in flight,” she said and then emphasized her final thought. “And I like a challenge.”
Tinsley’s eye for subject matter and pleasing composition isn’t reserved to birds. She also aims her camera at insects, incredible landscapes, flora, turtles and other non-feathered friends. Her creativity extends well beyond photography, too. She draws, writes stories and poetry, and even created more than 100 nature videos called, “Doc Ellen’s Natural Minute.” The short videos are posted on her website, docellensjourney.com, and show off Jordan Lake’s tranquil beauty, such as a mist hovering over the water in the early morning or a blue heron standing on the shore as water flows by.
Learning, teaching, sharing — it’s a common thread throughout Tinsley’s life. “If I reply to somebody’s comment — on my Facebook, Instagram, whatever — and they say, ‘It’s a beautiful picture; thank you for sharing,’ I’ll go right back with, ‘The joy is in the sharing,’” she said. “If I had a mantra — the joy is in the sharing.”
Tinsley, now in her 70s, still deals with the physical fallout from her accident, but it doesn’t slow her down. Each day is an opportunity to solve another puzzle, see and record something incredible and be a teacher. Whether through her art or her personal and group interactions, Tinsley ultimately hopes her work encourages people to slow down and appreciate what’s all around them.
“I want to share with them what the environment and the conservation of that environment will give to them in their lives.”
If you’d like to see more of Doc Ellen’s work or to inquire about lessons or educational talks for schools and community organizations, visit https://docellensnaturephotography.com.
