\n Tony Smart captured this image of the unusual animal.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “We were out for a drive on Tuesday, and my wife spotted something very light in colour, about 500 yards away, on the heathland.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I stopped the car, and as I had my camera with me (which I badly need to upgrade!), I managed to zoom in quite a lot.\n<\/p>\n
\n “There was a small herd of about 10 or so deer, including this white one. There was a second very pale one also, sitting in amongst the heather.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Tony took the picture just over the Dorset border between Rockford and Linwood, around two to three miles north-east of Ringwood.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said this isn’t the first time he has seen a white deer in the area.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Last year some time, by a quirk of fate, we saw another (possibly the same one) white deer, with just one normal coloured mate, in almost the exact same place.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Give or take a few hundred yards.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I don’t think they are classed as rare, but they are certainly not a common sight at all.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The British Deer Society says it regularly receives queries about white deer and how rare they might be.\n<\/p>\n
\n In most cases, the white deer are usually fallow, a species that is widely distributed across much of the UK and for which white is a recognised colour variety.\n<\/p>\n
\n White fallow are not seen as often as the other three main colour types (common, menil and black), but where they are present they tend to stand out more obviously against other members of a herd or when in cover.\n<\/p>\n
\n Fallow are unusual in that they occur in so many different colour varieties, a tendency which can be attributed to selective breeding in the deer parks where they were once kept before becoming feral in the UK.\n<\/p>\n
\n Fallow of the white variety are not albinos but have normal eye pigmentation, although their hooves and noses might be somewhat paler than the other colour varieties.\n<\/p>\n
\n Unusually pale coats in any deer are usually a result of under-production of melanin, the chemical responsible for skin pigmentation.\n<\/p>\n
\n True albinos have pink eyes and a complete lack of body pigment.\n<\/p>\n
\n If you enjoy taking photos of Dorset you might wish to join our camera club.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dorset Camera Club is a Facebook group created by the Dorset Echo and the Bournemouth Daily Echo.\n<\/p>\n
\n You can find the group at www.facebook.com\/groups\/echocameraclubdorset\n<\/p>\n
\n Here you can share your pictures and videos taken across Dorset and the New Forest, talk to fellow photographers and enter competitions.\n<\/p>\n
\n Photos posted here can be used in the Bournemouth Echo, Dorset Echo, and associated publications, websites, and social media channels.\n<\/p>\n
\n By posting pictures in the group, you are giving consent for publication.\n<\/p>\n
\n Portraits, landscapes, wildlife shots, and news pictures \u2013 we welcome them all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Smart captured this image of the unusual animal. He said: “We were out for a drive on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-553620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}