Duck house? (and dog house, too)

Hi!
I was mapping a park when I found a construction resembling a small house with openings allowing ducks or other small water birds entering inside it. These construction are somehow usual in Spanish parks, but I found no tag for “duck house” or even “dog house”.

(There is a tag for “dove house”, man_made=dovecote, but dove cotes use to be tall buildings).

Did you look on taginfo ?

I found a very small number of building=doghouse (4), dog_shelter (3) and dogshed (1) and 1 man_made=doghouse
I can’t find anything with duck, but there are some man_made=bird… tags in use. Nothing appropriate though I think.

I have seen the construction in local parks (Belgium) as well, but never bothered to map them. Perhaps many other mappers “forgot” to map them as well. This doesn’t mean you can’t map them and I think man_made is a good key. Don’t know a the value to use, perhaps a native English speaking person can help ?

There was a famous scandal a few years ago when a British MP claimed for an elaborate duck house on expenses (about EUR 2000 IIRC), so I think man_made=duck_house is fine.

The usual phrase for a place for dogs is kennel, but dog house is used too (although perhaps more often figuratively than literally: “He’s been sent to the doghouse”.

It’s always a good idea to check out a few alternatives (e.g, with hyphen, space, neither on Google ngram) to help chose something reasonably widely used. An example:

Note that kennels are different being a place where you can leave dogs whilst on holiday.

@SK53, the “house” on which Snoopy (from the Peanuts) sleeps, is what I would call a dog house. Nowadays, dogs that sleep outside, do so in an area that is typically fenced and have some “house” to sleep in as well. The whole of the area is a kennel for me. And then there are the amenities run by people where you can bring your dog e.g. during vacation, that is also a “kennel”. Correct ?

Hi!
I’m with Sk5.

I used “doghouse” instead of “kennel” in my wording because I understood a kennel is a place where people care other people’s pets.

I understand a “duck house” is not worth mapping. I just wanted to map it as a low-height obstacle, and I also wanted to avoid other people’s mapping it as a real house from the aerial imaginery.

Regards.

“Dog House” is American I think; “Kennel” is English. The plural of that “kennels” is also used for a place where you would send a dog to be looked after while you’re away, so you might say “next door’s dog sleeps in a kennel in the back garden” or “we’re going on holiday for a fortnight soon; we’re going to put the dog in kennels for the duration”.

thanks SomeoneElse for explaining the difference

It is good to map goose houses, etc. as they might chase and bite passers by.

See also https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:amenity%3Danimal_shelter#Dog_house