How to count consecutive times a character appears in a String

I have the code

public static int count(String text, char letter)
{
    int amount = 0;
    for(int i = 0; i < text.length(); i++)
    {
        if(text.charAt(i) == letter)
            amount++;
    }
    return amount;
}

to count how many times a certain letter appears in a String (ex: eeeeee has 6 e's).

But how would I go about returning the number of times a character appears consecutively with only one String parameter?

For example:

• AAbcde would return 1 (one a after the first a)
• abcde would return 0 (no consecutive count)
• abccd would return 1 (one c after the first c)
• aabccc would return 3 (one a after the first a + two c's after the first c)

Is there any simple way to achieve this similar to the code I already have?