Early Fall visitors passing through

On Sunday afternoon we saw a few visitors that we hadn't seen before in the yard.  I went to get the camera, but didn't take time for the tripod, so these shots were "freehand" and some at high zoom.  But I wanted to get some pictures.

This was the first one that caught my eye while I was out with the dogs on the patio.

I haven't seen any monarchs, so I was excited to get some pictures.  He was probably migrating through, given the time of year, but it was still fun to see him. He was checking out some of the late blooms on one of the butterfly bushes.

While I was out there with the camera I decided to get some shots of the daisies. They're finally blooming and adding a lot to the garden.

They were having their own visitors too.

But then I spotted this guy.

Thanks to Google Image Search (where you can upload a picture and search for similar images) I was able to identify this as a Variegated Fritillary.  The site where I found the other pictures like this had a lot of examples from North Carolina, so he could have been migrating south as well.  I haven't seen him before, so I'm glad I already had the camers to get a couple pictures to be able to identify him.

I'll be using the Google image search more often to help me identify the plants and visitors in the yard.  One of my goals is to identify the different plants we got when we bought the house.  It's been over three years now and I want to be sure I know how to care for the plants, and how to identify what might be toxic to the dogs.