Guide
Lake Poyrazlar lies seven or eight kilometres north-east of the centre of Sakarya, beside the Sakarya river. It is an alluvial barrier lake, formed when the river changed its bed, and it takes its name from the village of Poyrazlar on its shore; it is also known as Teke lake. The lake covers 67 hectares with a shoreline of 4,400 metres, and it is a protected natural site.
The water is fresh and between three and eight metres deep, shallow in the south where reed beds cover it. Woodland rings the lake. A small flooded forest at the southern end matters a good deal to waterfowl for feeding and breeding.
The lake drains its surplus into the Sakarya river 350 metres away, through a stream leaving its northern end. When the river is in flood its water enters the lake through a narrow channel with a sluice; the rest of the time the river feeds the lake by seepage. Its catchment covers 6.5 square kilometres.
A hundred and fifty-four bird species have been recorded here: 64 resident through the year, 36 arriving in winter, 47 in summer and 6 passing through. Just over half are passerines, and the seven species seen most consistently all belong to that order; the remaining 72 species fall across sixteen other orders.
Among the fish taken from the lake are tench, perch, pike, rudd, Prussian carp, roach, bream and crayfish, along with catfish and carp. Numbers of perch and pike fell enough for the fisheries cooperative to wind up its work in 1992. In the fishing season the daily catch runs between twenty and eighty-five kilograms.
The natural woodland around the lake is hornbeam and oak, with stands of black pine and Scots pine added later by planting. The Regional Forestry Directorate has laid the shore out as a day-visit picnic ground, run under private management, and it fills up at weekends.
- Designated
- 11.07.2011