A retiree had a close encounter on a rural walk - when he spotted the face of E.T. in a tree.

Mike Wallis, 75, was walking on the Yorkshire Dales when he spotted the famous alien.

He said: “I saw this tree - I pointed it out to my wife and said, ‘That looks just like E.T.!’.

"We were just in the Dales - not too far from where our house is. We were only going to the local church to look at the bluebells.

“But then we came into the wood adjacent - we wanted to go somewhere nowhere would find us."

Mike, from Harrogate, first spotted E.T. in 2020.

And he's been going back ever since.

He said: "I’ve visited the E.T. tree many times afterwards - it looks exactly the same!”

E.T. first appeared in Steven Spielberg's 1982 sci-fi film about a little boy who befriends an extraterrestrial - the eponymous E.T.

Forty-one years later and the film is often cited as one of the greatest of all time, with its iconic bike scene spawning many parodies.