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The conservationist's gaze sweeps across vast expanses of open meadows, looking for signs of life in the early morning gloom.

He utters a muted voice as the team seeks a spot to hide in the fields. In the distance, the vast metropolis of Beijing slumbers on. During the vigil, the only sound is the quiet of the morning.

Suddenly, as the sky starts to lighten with the approaching day, there is the crunch of footsteps. Illegal trappers are present.

Snared

In the skies above us, a multitude of winged travelers, many so small that they can fit in the palm of your hand, are traveling to the south for winter.

They have benefited from the warmer months in Siberia, or Mongolia, eating bugs and berries. As the year nears its end and chilling gusts bring the initial freeze of winter, they are flying to warmer places to breed and eat.

There are 1500-plus bird species, accounting for thirteen percent of the global population – more than 800 of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major flyways they follow cross through China.

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

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

The trap we stumbled upon was extending over half the length of the field and propped up with wooden sticks. In the middle, a meadow pipit was struggling frantically to free his legs, but the more it moved, the more its claws became tangled.

It was a protected songbird, a protected bird in China, and an important "indicator species" – which signifies if its numbers are thriving, so is its habitat.

Pursuing the Poachers

This activist, performs this duty for free using his personal funds. He has sacrificed many nights of sleep to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last decade convincing the police in Beijing to prioritize this issue.

"Initially, no-one cared," he remarks.

So he gathered a team who were concerned and established a group called the Bird Protection Unit. He organized community gatherings and brought in the heads of the relevant authorities. These consistent and determined acts of advocacy seem to have paid off. The police realized that catching poachers also led to tracking down other kinds of illegal operations.

"It became clear our objectives became partially aligned," Silva says, while pointing out that the response is not uniform.

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

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

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

The change stunned Silva. The grasslands began to shrink, as did the ecosystems they sustained.

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

This has not made for an simple journey. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was being investigated by Silva and fought back.

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

He has also lost his army of volunteers over the years. This work requires patience and night vigils. Silva says few people are prepared for the challenging and occasionally risky job.

"This is my full-time commitment," he says. "I treat it as a mission because if you want to tackle this challenge, you must commit completely. You can't do it part-time."

He says donations pays for some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan a year – but support has waned because of the economic situation.

So he has found new ways to track the poachers.

He examines aerial photos to find the trails worn away by the poachers. He maps those against the birds' migratory routes and looks for areas where they may rest. The aerial views can even show netting setups which can capture hundreds of small birds at night.

"Certain prized species command a premium," Silva says. "In big cities like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to own songbirds are now quite wealthy."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva argues the penalties to punish the crime do not outweigh the potential profits of trapping and trading 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 persists mainly among retired men in their 60s or 70s. Silva says older Chinese people don't realise they are breaking the law, or understand that so many more birds had to die in a trap so they could buy a caged bird.

"These individuals often lacked enough to eat in their youth. Now with some disposable income, they have inherited the habit and custom of caging birds," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was no time to raise awareness about ecology. 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 covered by a dark cloth. He tells passers-by quietly that his songbird is rare, worth nearly 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an old Beijing where small unofficial traders 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 vintage jewellery to false teeth.

We were told that protected birds could be purchased in a small park. The location was not concealed.

Music was blasting from a speaker in a shaded area where a group of elderly ladies were performing a fan dance. Nearby several men, all in their later years, had congregated with bird cages – some had two or three in their hands. Most were concealed by black fabric.

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