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The activist's vision darts over vast expanses of dense fields, searching for signs of life in the early morning gloom.

He utters less than a whisper as we try to find a concealed position in the open area. Behind us, the sprawling city of Beijing slumbers on. As we wait, we hear only our own breath.

Suddenly, as the sky starts to lighten with the approaching day, there is the crunch of footsteps. The hunters have arrived.

Trapped

Overhead, countless migratory birds, many so small that they can fit in the palm of your hand, are migrating south for winter.

They have benefited from the warmer months in Siberia, or Mongolia, feasting on bugs and berries. As the year winds down and icy winds bring the initial freeze of winter, they are flying to southern locales to find food and shelter.

The nation hosts over 1500 bird species, accounting for thirteen percent of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are migratory birds. Several of the major migration routes they follow intersect in China.

The patch of grassland being monitored, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – any further and the urban landscape offer scant chance to rest among clusters of concrete.

It is also an oasis for the poachers and their "mist nets", so thin you can almost miss them.

The one we nearly walked into was strung across half the length of the field and held up with bamboo poles. At its center, a small finch was struggling frantically to untangle itself, but the more it struggled, the more its feet got ensnared.

It was a protected songbird, a protected bird in China, and an important "bio-indicator" – which signifies if its population is healthy, so is its ecosystem.

Pursuing the Poachers

Silva, who is in his 30s, performs this duty for free using his personal funds. He has forgone many nights of sleep to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last decade persuading the police in Beijing to enforce the law.

"Back in 2015, no-one cared," he states.

So he gathered a team who were concerned and formed a group known as the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He organized community gatherings and invited the leaders of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of persuasion appear to have worked. The police discovered that apprehending illegal hunters also led to uncovering other kinds of criminal activity.

"We found our objectives became partially aligned," Silva says, noting that implementation remains inconsistent.

Silva's love of birds started in childhood. He grew up in the nineties in a much changed capital.

He remembers exploring the grasslands on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, the transformation was dramatic."

Rapid economic growth brought millions of rural workers to cities. This fast-paced development meant grasslands were viewed as land for construction, not protected zones to preserve.

The change stunned Silva. The grasslands began to shrink, as did the habitats they supported.

"I made the choice back then to dedicate myself to preservation and I chose this direction," he says.

It has not been an simple journey. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was being investigated by Silva and retaliated.

"He assembled several of his associates who surrounded me and assaulted me," Silva remembers. He says he went to the police but the perpetrators were not held accountable.

He has also lost his team of helpers over the years. This work requires stealth and sleepless nights. Silva says not many are prepared for the challenging and occasionally risky job.

"This is my full-time commitment," he says. "I made it a project because if you want to address this major issue, you must commit completely. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says donations pays for some of the costs – more than 100,000 yuan a year – but support has waned because of the slowing economy.

So he has found new ways to hunt the hunters.

He analyzes aerial photos to find the paths created by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' migratory routes and looks for areas where they may stop for the night. The satellite images can even show netting setups which can capture hundreds of small birds during darkness.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats command a premium," Silva says. "In urban centers like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to keep birds are now quite wealthy."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva believes the fines to deter the activity do not outweigh the financial benefits of catching and selling songbirds.

Keeping a caged bird was – and for some people in China, still is – a status symbol. This dates back to the Qing dynasty. Nobles and elites would build ornate bamboo cages for their birds.

It's a tradition that continues mainly among older individuals in their later years. Silva says older Chinese people may not understand they are committing a wildlife crime, or grasp that so many more birds had to die in a trap so they could buy a pet.

"This generation often lacked enough to eat in their youth. Now with some disposable income, they have inherited the practice of caging birds," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was no time to raise awareness about ecology. Once adults' values are set, they're extremely difficult to change."

Disrupted

Along a riverside path in Beijing, a trader has several tiny enclosures with tiny twittering birds.

A separate individual is positioned near a nearby market holding a bird cage shrouded in a dark cloth. He informs passers-by quietly that his songbird is valuable, worth about 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an old Beijing where informal vendors have established a niche trade.

The path by the river stretches for several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were people looking at everything from old trinkets to dentures.

We were told that wild songbirds could be purchased in a nearby green space. It was easy to find.

Music was blasting from a speaker under the low trees where a group of elderly ladies were choreographing a traditional dance. Close by several men, all in their later years, had gathered with bird cages – some had multiple in their hands. Most were concealed by black fabric.

But today there would be no transactions because the police had arrived. They were interviewing the bird owners and taking names. Unyielding, one man claimed he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his