'A fairy tale experience': Rare white deer spotted roaming Gloucestershire countryside

A rare white deer has been spotted roaming the Gloucestershire countryside.

Esha Patel, 19, photographed the animal while out on a walk in a popular beauty spot in the county on Sunday 8 October.

She said the deer was just metres away from her when she caught it on camera and described the experience as being like "something out of a fairy tale".

"I've never seen one before so it was an amazing experience. The deer came so close to us well, about three metres from us," she said.

"It's a beautiful, gorgeous species and was an extraordinary experience!

"I love animals so it made me happy to see this rare deer out in the wilderness," she added.

According to the British Deer Society, white deer are usually part of the fallow deer species.

Fallow deer are distributed across much of the UK and are unusual in that they have four main colour variations of coat — common, menil, melanistic and white.

The British Deer Society said: "White fallow are not seen as often as the other three main colour types, but where they are present they tend to stand out more obviously against other members of a herd or when in cover.

"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," they added.