to the very same end, the word baiting continued to be used for that purpose. EVERY owl bander I've ever spent time with has called mice "bait" and the practice "baiting. I've never ever heard a bander refer to a mouse as "bird food" nor to luring a bird to a net using a mouse to be "feeding."

Bird feeding had an entirely different origin than owl baiting. A few people in the 19th century started tossing out food for birds during bad weather, not for their own entertainment but because they wanted to help the birds. The "Feed the Birds" song in Mary Poppins is not about feeding birds to gratify birders who get splendid views of pigeons, but to help the birds--any gratification comes from the specificreading the book. The law banning it was made before all the science was in. It was Joe Hickey at U of Wisconsin who found the connection between DDT and thinning eggshells of birds of prey—but the actual mechanism was still not understood. The law was finally passed due not only to the effects DDT was presumably having on birds but also because DDT was being detected in mother’s milk.

But there were values to using DDT as well as compelling reasons to limit its use or ban it—science was showing, on the other side, how effective it was at killing pest insects. And science was also showing how it lost its effectiveness as mosquitoes and other pests developed resistance. Lawmakers NEVER base laws entirely on science, and even