Recently a bird has been walking around our backyard, it isn't afraid of our dog only flies away when he walks near... Looks like some sort of quail and he/she also enjoys walking around, pecking the ground and wandering through the garden. Help me find what he is!
It would help if you put your location in the posting. I do not think this is any kind of quail, the beak and tail look wrong to me but then that is just a guess. Have you seen this bird fly? or does it just hop around? How did it get on top of the fence?
Certainly doesn't look like a quail to me either. Markings and the shape of beak, body and feathers is wrong. Doesn't look like anything I've ever seen, but I actually had to google 'grouse' - we don't have those around here (here being Denmark, so I'm probably not much of a help, but I do like a bird identification challenge ^^). The beak looks kind of crow-like to me though - the grouse images I found didn't seem to have that kind of beak. But the feathers do seem kind of like grouse feathers, so maybe te pics just didn't show the right species.
Yeah location would help- most of the visitors on this site are in United States and not familiar with wild birds in other countries.
My first thoughts- are you in Australia? Koel came to mind first but with that head/bill it could be a coucal, maybe a pheasant coucal. Koels are parasites and well known for being very loud. coucals are strange birds, they prefer to walk around- another hint I think of it being a coucal of some kind.