Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Titmouse" narrates the poet's encounter with a Black-capped Chickadee during a winter storm. The poet praises the tiny chickadee as a "scrap of valor" (234) and learns from it a lesson on self reliance:

I think no virtue goes with size;

The reason of all cowardice

Is, that men are overgrown,

And to be valiant, must come down

To the titmouse dimension . . . .

(236)