Rare Colour Morphs

If you hang about around the car park at the Village Hall for long enough, you may be lucky enough to see the white squirrel shown below.  Trevor Buttle spotted this rare albino squirrel recently and conveniently had his camera to hand.  Apparently the birth of an albino squirrel is a one in 100,000 chance according to wildlife experts.  Just who those experts are, and how they came up with such a suspiciously round figure is unclear, but it's a figure widely quoted when white squirrel sightings are noted on the internet.  I've seen a white squirrel but I'm sure I've not seen 100,000 grey squirrels - maybe I'm just lucky.

White (Grey) Squirrel - Sciurus carolinensis

While out looking for bumblebees carrying pollen recently, in the Dungeness area, I found what I thought was another rare colour morph, only this time from the insect world.  I thought it was the pink form of the Meadow Grasshopper (Chorthippus parallelus).  Some sources say that pink grasshoppers are not rare but that all meadow grasshopper nymphs are pink (this one is a nymph), and only rarely is the pink colour carried over into adulthood, and then only to females.  However, when I came to check the photo more carefully, I realized that it wasn't a Meadow Grasshopper, but a Field Grasshopper.  (Very subtle naming there!) The Field Grasshopper (Chorthippus brunneus) ranges from buff-coloured through to purple with many shades in between, so pink is not in the least unusual.  But I thought you may like to see the photo anyway.

 Field Grasshopper - Chorthippus brunneus