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The activist's gaze sweeps across vast expanses of open meadows, looking for signs of life in the inky blackness.

He utters a muted voice as we try to find a spot to hide in the fields. In the distance, the huge urban center of Beijing has yet to wake. During the vigil, we hear only the quiet of the morning.

And then, as the sky starts to lighten ahead of sunrise, the sound of footsteps emerges. The hunters have arrived.

Trapped

Overhead, countless migratory birds, some tiny enough that they could rest in the cup of a hand, are traveling to the south for winter.

They have benefited from the extended daylight in Siberia, or Mongolia, feasting on insects and fruit. As the year nears its end and chilling gusts bring the early cold of winter, they head to southern locales to find food and shelter.

China is home to over 1500 bird species, representing roughly 13% of the world's total – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Four of the nine major migration routes they follow converge in China.

The patch of grassland being monitored, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an haven for small birds – farther in and the urban landscape offer little opportunity to rest among clusters of concrete.

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

The trap we stumbled upon was strung across a large section of the field and held up with wooden sticks. In the middle, a meadow pipit was fighting hard to escape, but the more it struggled, the more its feet got ensnared.

It was a meadow pipit, a species under protection in China, and an important "indicator species" – meaning if its numbers are thriving, so is its ecosystem.

Pursuing the Poachers

This activist, carries out this mission for free using his personal funds. He has given up on many nights of sleep to set songbirds free, and he has spent the last 10 years urging the police in Beijing to enforce the law.

"In the early days, authorities were indifferent," he says.

So he gathered a team who did care and formed a group called the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He held community gatherings and invited the officials of the local police and forestry bureau. These consistent and determined acts of persuasion appear to have worked. The police found that apprehending illegal hunters also helped in identifying other kinds of criminal activity.

"We found our goals were partially aligned," Silva says, adding the caveat that the response is not uniform.

Silva's love of birds started in childhood. He grew up in the nineties in a very different Beijing.

He recalls wandering in the fields on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, everything changed."

China's booming economy brought millions of rural workers to cities. This rapid urbanisation meant grasslands were viewed as land for construction, not sanctuaries to conserve.

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

"I made the choice back then to pursue environmental protection and I followed this course," he says.

This has not made for an simple journey. One of Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was under scrutiny by Silva and retaliated.

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

He has also lost his team of helpers over the years. This work demands patience and night vigils. Silva says few people are willing to take on the challenging and occasionally risky job.

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

He says donations pays for some of the costs – more than 100,000 yuan annually – but funding has declined because of the slowing economy.

So he has developed new ways to hunt the hunters.

He examines satellite imagery to find the trails created by the poachers. He maps those against the birds' migratory routes and looks for areas where they may stop for the night. The aerial views can even show netting setups which can catch hundreds of small birds at night.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats sell for a high price," Silva says. "In big cities like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to keep birds are now quite wealthy."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva argues the fines to punish the crime do not exceed the financial benefits of trapping and trading songbirds.

Owning a pet bird was – and for some generations in China, still is – a status symbol. This originates from the imperial era. Nobles and elites would build elaborate bamboo cages for their birds.

It's a tradition that persists mainly among retired men in their later years. Silva says older Chinese people may not understand they are breaking the law, or grasp that so many more birds had to die in a trap for them to purchase a pet.

"These individuals often lacked enough to eat growing up. Now with a little money, they have adopted the habit and custom of keeping birds in cages," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was no time to educate people about ecology. Once adults' values are formed, they're really hard to change."

Apprehended

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

A separate individual stands outside a local market holding a bird cage shrouded in a black veil. He informs passers-by discreetly 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 area alongside the water extends over several miles and on a typical day, there were shoppers browsing everything from old trinkets to dentures.

Information suggested that wild songbirds could be bought in a small park. The location was not concealed.

Music was blasting from a speaker in a shaded area where a troop of elderly ladies were performing a traditional dance. Nearby several men, all over 50, had gathered with bird cages – some had two or three in their hands. Most were concealed by dark cloth.

But on this occasion there would be no transactions because the police had arrived. 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