How to get a pigeon to illustrate the pigeonhole principle?
There are some hieroglyph packages for LaTeX, which define all kinds of symbols, e.g. ancient Egyptians walking around, dung beetles, or African birds. Among these is the package phaistos
which defines \HPdove
. Strictly speaking it is a dove, but honestly, who can tell the difference from such a pictogram?
Thanks to @cfr for reminding me about ethics regarding animals in captivity. I increased the spacing around the bird a little in the hope to meet the legal standards.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{phaistos}
\begin{document}
\renewcommand\arraystretch{2}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
\PHdove & \PHdove & \PHdove \\
\hline
\PHdove & \PHdove & \PHdove \\
\hline
\PHdove & \PHdove & \PHdove \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
The Phaistos font is even available in OpenType and thus usable with Xe/LuaLaTeX. For some reason the dove symbol is mirrored and smaller than in the Type 1 version.
What I find most convincing in this approach is that Unicode actually defines this symbol. Therefore it is as easy as hitting the key on your keyboard!
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\phaistos{Phaistos}
%\def\PHdove{{\phaistos\symbol{"101EF}}}
\def\PHdove{{\phaistos }}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
\PHdove & \PHdove & \PHdove \\
\hline
\PHdove & \PHdove & \PHdove \\
\hline
\PHdove & \PHdove & \PHdove \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
There are two doves (a peaceful and a Minoan one) in unicode:
% arara: lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\begin{document}
{\setmainfont{Symbola}
\symbol{"1F54A}%
\symbol{"101EF}}%
{\setmainfont{EversonMono}
\symbol{"101EF}}%
{\setmainfont{EversonMono-Bold}
\symbol{"101EF}}%
\end{document}
Please turn and order them as you please.
\documentclass[pstricks,margin=5mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pst-fun}
\begin{document}
\pspicture[dimen=m](12,12)
\multirput(0,0)(4,0){3}{\multirput(0,0)(0,4){3}{\psframe(4,4)\rput(0,1){\psBird}}}
\endpspicture
\end{document}