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The activist's eyes scan over miles of tall grassland, hunting for suspicious activity in the pre-dawn darkness.

He utters less than a whisper as the team seeks a concealed position in the grasslands. Behind us, the vast metropolis of Beijing has yet to wake. As we wait, we hear only our own breath.

Suddenly, as the sky starts to lighten ahead of sunrise, the sound of footsteps emerges. Illegal trappers are present.

Caught

In the skies above us, countless migratory birds, many so small that they can fit in the cup of a hand, are migrating south for winter.

They have utilized the long summer days in northern regions, feasting on bugs and berries. As the year winds down and icy winds bring the early cold of winter, they are flying to southern locales to breed and eat.

There are 1500-plus bird species, which is about 13% of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major flyways they follow cross through China.

The patch of grassland where we were, on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, is an haven for small birds – any further and the urban landscape offer few options to rest among towering rows of concrete.

It is equally attractive for the poachers and their "mist nets", so delicate you can almost miss them.

The trap we stumbled upon was strung across a large section of the field and supported with wooden sticks. In the middle, a meadow pipit was fighting hard to untangle itself, 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 "bio-indicator" – which signifies if its population is healthy, so is its ecosystem.

Pursuing the Poachers

This activist, carries out this mission for free using his personal funds. He has sacrificed many sleeping hours to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last decade persuading the police in Beijing to enforce the law.

"Back in 2015, authorities were indifferent," he states.

So he recruited volunteers who were concerned and formed a group known as the Bird Protection Unit. He organized public meetings and invited the heads of the local police and forestry bureau. These consistent and determined acts of persuasion seem to have paid off. The police found that apprehending illegal hunters also helped in tracking down other kinds of illegal operations.

"We found our goals were somewhat shared," Silva says, noting that the response is not uniform.

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

He remembers wandering in the fields on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "But starting from the 2000s, the transformation was dramatic."

Industrialization brought millions of rural workers to cities. This fast-paced development meant grasslands were viewed as land for construction, not sanctuaries to preserve.

The change stunned Silva. The grasslands receded, as did the wildlife they housed.

"I made the choice back then to work in conservation and I followed this course," he says.

It has not been an simple journey. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was under scrutiny by Silva and fought back.

"He assembled several of his accomplices who surrounded me and assaulted me," Silva recalls. He says he went to the police but those responsible were not brought to justice.

He has also lost his team of helpers over the years. This work requires covert operations and lost sleep. Silva says not many are prepared for the difficult – and sometimes dangerous job.

"My life is devoted to this," he says. "I treat it as a mission because if you want to tackle this challenge, you must give it your all. You can't do it part-time."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – more than 100,000 yuan annually – but support has waned because of the economic situation.

So he has developed new ways to hunt the hunters.

He studies aerial photos to find the paths created 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 scores of small birds during darkness.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats command a high price," Silva says. "In urban centers like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to own songbirds are now often affluent."

While there are wildlife laws in place, Silva reckons the fines to punish the crime do not exceed 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 older Chinese people don't realise they are committing a wildlife crime, or understand that so many more birds had to die in a trap for them to purchase a caged bird.

"This generation often lacked enough to eat in their youth. Now with some disposable income, they have adopted the practice of caging birds," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to educate people about the environment. Once people's attitudes are set, they're extremely difficult to change."

Disrupted

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

A separate individual is positioned near a nearby market holding a bird cage shrouded in a black veil. He tells passers-by discreetly that his songbird is valuable, worth about 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an old Beijing where small unofficial traders have created their own market.

The path alongside the water extends over several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were shoppers browsing everything from vintage jewellery to false teeth.

Information suggested that wild songbirds could be bought in a nearby green space. The location was not concealed.

Loud music played from a speaker in a shaded area where a troop of elderly ladies were performing a traditional dance. Nearby several men, all in their later years, had gathered with bird cages – some had two or three in their hands. Most were concealed by black fabric.

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