A November, or a Pale November, or an Autumnal Moth! Who knows?

This is a November Moth…or a Pale November Moth…or maybe an Autumnal Moth…it’s definitely one of the Epirrita species of moth, but I, and almost nobody else could tell you for sure which from this photo.

One of the British Epirrita species of moth
One of three possible moths, so we record it as Epirrita agg (aggregate)

But, it’s is one of those moths that could be any of several different species. You cannot know for sure unless you’ve raised it from larvae and know for sure what species you had, or you’ve done DNA testing but that assumes someone has the genomics for the various species, or you’ve done what lepidopterists call “gen det”.

Gen det, genital determination is where you dissect the male moth’s genitalia. Moth genitalia are markedly different even between otherwise very similar species and so you can identify which species you have from the bits you chopped up.

I am not going there.

So, my records simply say Epirrita agg, meaning an aggregate of all the possible species in the UK and no positive ID for any of them in particular.

There is, however, another British Epirrita species, the Small Autumnal Moth, which as the name would suggest, accurately for once in taxonomy, is actually smaller than the others and its wings markings are stronger. If you have one of those, you can assume you’d be able to distinguish it from the other three Epirrita species.