turbo chook
English
Tasmanian nativehen or turbo chook
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun
turbo chook (plural turbo chooks)
- (Australia, slang) Tribonyx mortierii, a flightless bird related to rails and coots.
- Synonym: Tasmanian nativehen
- 2018, Ian Fraser, Birds in Their Habitats: Journeys with a Naturalist, page 64:
- All of which means that the nice neat pattern suggested by other Tasmanian endemic birds isn't a template for all its endemics: did the turbo chooks evolve on the mainland (and, if so, why did they lose their flight powers there?) and later run to Tasmania, or did they evolve in Tasmania and cross to the mainland during an earlier glacial period?