'Incredibly rare' white squirrel caught on camera scampering around Northampton garden

An 'incredibly rare' white squirrel has been captured on camera having a romp through a Northampton resident's garden.

The fascinating footage of the flashy rodent scampering through a Duston back garden was shared with the Chronicle & Echo by on Sunday (October 25).

The question is whether the visitor was one of the UK's exceptionally rare albino squirrels.

Northampton resident Chelsea Cooper told the Chron her nan Lorraine shared the video after seeing it visit her garden day after day.

Chelsea said: "My nan kept saying there was a white squirrel that kept coming to her garden and they fed them every day.

"I saw the video and I all I could say was 'oh my goodness'. Then I looked it up online and read how rare it was. I couldn't believe it."

There are two conditions that can cause a squirrel to have white fur, and both of them are very rare to see.

The visitor to the Duston garden could either be 'leucistic', which causes a partial lack of pigmentation but doesn't affect the animal's eyes.

But the rarest to see are albino squirrels, which have both white fur and red eyes.

It is estimated that although there are up to 2.7million gray squirrels in the UK, there could be as little as 50 albino variants in the entire country - and one could be right here in Northampton.

It's not the first time a white squirrel has been spotted in the Duston area. St Crispin's resident Toby Brand snapped a picture of another flashy critter in September 2019.

The unusual colour is caused by a recessive gene that results in an absence of melanin, which normally gives hair, skin and eyes its pigmentation.

Additionally, leucistic and albino squirrels are even rarer to see because their stark white fur sticks out to predators and makes them easier prey.

But in the footage, the bright white scamp can be seen happily chasing another grey squirrel around the Duston garden for over a minute.