'Incredibly rare' albino squirrel spotted in Grangewood Park, Croydon

BLINK AND YOU'LL MISS IT: Rare white squirrel spotted in Tooting garden

These pictures show an incredibly rare "albino squirrel" scampering around Croydon's Grangewood Park last month - thought to be only one a of small population in the UK.

Hasib Baber spotted the bright white squirrel on a trip to the park on October 23.

He said: "I saw it when I was down in the area - I'm from Brixton - and took a few snaps with my camera phone.

"It was a bit of a surprise, it's obviously quite distinctive and it's not really the sort of thing you expect to see in Croydon.

"[But] I didn't really think too much of it until I was chatting to my friend in the pub last week. He ended up googling it and he found out that it was incredibly rare."

Out of an estimated 2.5m grey squirrels in the UK, only one in 100,000 are thought to be born albino.

Despite their scarcity, south London appears to be a popular place to spot the rare rodents: in recent months they have been glimpsed in Tooting and Camberwell.

Ian Tokelove, of the London Wildlife Trust, told ITV news: "Albino squirrels are definitely rare, but not unheard of. We probably see reports every year.

"London is probably one of the best places in the whole of Britain to see grey squirrels. They have adapted supremely well to the urban environment and are much less shy of people than their country cousins."