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The activist's gaze sweeps across miles of dense fields, hunting for any movement in the pre-dawn darkness.

He speaks in a muted voice as we try to find a place of cover in the open area. Behind us, the huge urban center of Beijing remains asleep. During the vigil, we hear only the quiet of the morning.

Suddenly, as the sky begins to brighten ahead of sunrise, we hear footsteps. The hunters have arrived.

Snared

Across the heavens, countless migratory birds, some tiny enough that they can fit in the palm of your hand, are journeying southward for winter.

They have taken advantage of the warmer months in Siberia, or Mongolia, feasting on insects and fruit. As the year comes to a close and cold breezes bring the early cold of winter, they journey to warmer places to find food and shelter.

There are 1500-plus bird species, representing roughly 13% of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are migratory birds. Several of the major flyways they follow intersect in China.

The area of meadow where we were, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – farther in and the city skies offer scant chance to rest among clusters of concrete.

It is also an oasis for the poachers and their "barely visible nets", so delicate you can hardly spot them.

The trap we stumbled upon was extending over half the length of the field and held up with bamboo poles. At its center, a small finch was fighting hard to untangle itself, but the more it struggled, the more its feet got ensnared.

It was a meadow pipit, a protected bird in China, and an important "indicator species" – that means if its population is healthy, so is its habitat.

Hunting the Hunters

This activist, carries out this mission for free using his personal funds. He has forgone many nights of sleep to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last decade urging the police in Beijing to enforce the law.

"Initially, authorities were indifferent," he remarks.

So he enlisted helpers who did care and formed a group called the Bird Protection Unit. He organized community gatherings and invited the officials of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of persuasion seem to have paid off. The police realized that apprehending illegal hunters also led to identifying other kinds of criminal activity.

"It became clear our objectives became somewhat shared," Silva says, adding the caveat that enforcement is still patchy.

Silva's love of birds started in childhood. He was raised in the 1990s in a much changed capital.

He remembers roaming through the grasslands on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, everything changed."

Industrialization brought millions of rural workers to cities. This fast-paced development meant grasslands were seen as areas for development, not conservation areas to preserve.

The transformation was alarming. The grasslands started disappearing, as did the habitats they supported.

"I decided back then to pursue environmental protection and I took this path," he says.

This has not made for an easy life. One of Beijing's biggest bird dealers discovered he was being investigated by Silva and fought back.

"He gathered several of his associates who confronted me and assaulted me," Silva remembers. He says he reported to the police but those responsible were not brought to justice.

He has also seen the departure of his team of helpers over the years. This work demands covert operations and lost sleep. Silva says few people are willing to take on the challenging and occasionally risky job.

"I do this full-time," he says. "I treat it as a mission because if you want to tackle this challenge, you must devote yourself wholeheartedly. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – more than 100,000 yuan a year – but donations have dipped because of the economic situation.

So he has found new ways to hunt the hunters.

He analyzes aerial photos to find the routes worn away by the poachers. He maps those against the birds' flight paths and looks for areas where they may rest. The satellite images can even show netting setups which can capture hundreds of small birds during darkness.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats sell for a premium," Silva says. "In big cities like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to keep birds are now often affluent."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva reckons the fines to punish the crime do not outweigh the potential profits of catching and selling songbirds.

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

This custom that continues mainly among older individuals in their later years. Silva says some elderly citizens may not understand they are committing a wildlife crime, or understand that numerous birds were killed in a trap so they could buy a caged bird.

"These individuals often lacked enough to eat growing up. Now with some disposable income, they have adopted the habit and custom of caging birds," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was no time to raise awareness about the environment. Once adults' values are formed, they're really hard to change."

Apprehended

On a long low wall in Beijing, a vendor has several tiny enclosures with tiny twittering birds.

Another man is positioned near a local market holding a bird cage shrouded in a black veil. He tells passers-by quietly that his songbird is rare, worth about 1900 yuan.

This offers a view of an old Beijing where informal vendors have established a niche trade.

The area alongside the water stretches for several miles and on a typical day, 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 troop of elderly ladies were choreographing a fan dance. Nearby several men, all in their later years, had congregated with bird cages – some had multiple in their hands. Most were covered in black fabric.

But on this occasion there would be no sales because the police had appeared. They were questioning the bird owners and recording details. Defiant, one man claimed he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his