Čik

Čik (Чик)
Origin	Subotička Peščara, Vojvodina, Serbia
Mouth	Tisa river at Bačko Petrovo Selo, Vojvodina, Serbia
Progression	Tisza→ Danube→ Black Sea
Basin countries	Serbia
Length	95 km
Source elevation	128 m
Basin area	481 km²

The Čik or Čiker (Serbian Cyrillic: Чик or Чикер; Hungarian: Csík-ér, Croatian: Čik or Čiker) is a river in northern Serbia. A 95 km-long right tributary to the Tisa river, it flows entirely within the Bačka region of Vojvodina province.

The Čik springs out in the northwestern part of the Subotička Peščara, between the village of Tavankut and the city of Subotica, near the Hungarian border, at an altitude of 128 m. It starts as an unimportant slow stream of water near the Tavankut's hamlets of Čikerija and Kobino Selo. From its source to the mouth, the river flows in the southeast direction, next to the hamlets of Verušić and Naumovićevo.

As the river grows, next to the villages of Višnjevac, Čantavir and Dušanovo, a dams are constructed to regulate the flow, in both upper and lower course. In the lower course there are thick growths of reed on the banks of the river, which is at this point 2–4 m deep. After the villages of Tornjoš, Svetićevo and Obornjača, the river empties into the Tisa at the village of Bačko Petrovo Selo, at an altitude of 74 m.

The Čik has been neglected by environmental institutions for some time, but in the 1990s the lower part of the course was cleaned and the once almost-dead river was re-populated with many species of fish (carp, pike, bream, pike-perch, tench), becoming a major fishing resort.

The Čik belongs to the Black Sea drainage basin and it is neither channeled nor navigable. Itself, it drains an area of 481 km². The name of the river comes from the Hungarian word csikó, meaning foal.

References

• Jovan Đ. Marković (1990): Enciklopedijski geografski leksikon Jugoslavije; Svjetlost-Sarajevo; ISBN 86-01-02651-6