Here in black and white, two rare squirrels... and they’re both grey!
THEY are so rare that most of us don’t even know they exist.
But one woman was lucky enough to spot both a black and white squirrel while walking her dog.
Nikki Lane, 46, is used to feeding black squirrels in her garden – one of which is pictured above.
But she was surprised to see a black squirrel sitting in the same tree as a white squirrel in a field in Letchworth, Hertfordshire.
Mrs Lane, from nearby Stotfold, Bedfordshire, said: ‘The chances must be pretty slim of seeing both a black and white squirrel.
‘I have got used to the black squirrels in my garden stealing peanuts from the birds within minutes of me putting them out.
‘But I had never in my life seen a white one before.’
She managed to photograph the white squirrel but missed out on a snap of them together. Hertfordshire is a hotspot for black squirrels, which were first introduced from America a century ago and have spread across the country.
An alternative theory is that they escaped from a menagerie kept by the Duke of Bedford. They are grey squirrels with a genetic mutation that turns them black, and are also found in Cambridgeshire and as far north as Northumbria.
White squirrels are much more rare, with only a handful spotted in the UK.
They are also technically grey squirrels but they have leucism – a genetic mutation that causes partial loss of pigmentation. Their eyes are black, meaning they can see better than albino squirrels.