They’re regularly seen pecking the ground in Norfolk’s fields and running frantically along county lanes. 

But when Robert Leeder and his partner, Bonnie, spotted a pure white pheasant on a jaunt through the Broads they had to look twice. 

The couple, who live in Catfield, near Stalham, stopped the car and got out to take photos of what they later discovered was a rare albino pheasant. 

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Mr Leeder, 50, said: “We were driving through the village Irstead, near Neatishead [on March 15], and we saw it walking in the middle of the road.

Great Yarmouth Mercury: Robert Leeder and his partner, Bonnie, who spotted the white pheasant Robert Leeder and his partner, Bonnie, who spotted the white pheasant (Image: Robert Leeder)

"When I first saw it I thought it was a dove, it was only when I got closer that we realised it was a pheasant.

“It was quite tame, it just stood there.”

Great Yarmouth Mercury: The white pheasantThe white pheasant (Image: Robert Leeder)

True albino pheasants are rare - their colour is the result of a genetic mutation that inhibits melanin.

But there are also leucistic pheasants, which are also white and are often mistaken for albinos.