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The activist's eyes scan across vast expanses of tall grassland, hunting for signs of life in the early morning gloom.

He speaks in a hushed tone as they attempt to locate a place of cover in the fields. In the distance, the huge urban center of Beijing remains asleep. During the vigil, the only sound is the sound of breathing.

Suddenly, as the sky turns a shade lighter with the approaching day, the sound of footsteps emerges. The hunters have arrived.

Snared

Overhead, a multitude of winged travelers, some tiny enough that they can fit in the cup of a hand, are journeying southward for winter.

They have benefited from the warmer months in northern regions, consuming insects and fruit. As the year nears its end and chilling gusts bring the first frosts of winter, they head to warmer places to breed and eat.

China is home to 1500-plus bird species, which is about thirteen percent of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major flyways they follow converge in China.

The patch of grassland where we were, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an refuge for small birds – any further and the city skies offer little opportunity to rest among towering rows 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 bamboo poles. At its center, a small finch was struggling frantically to untangle itself, but the more it struggled, the more its claws became tangled.

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

Hunting the Hunters

Silva, who is in his 30s, performs this duty for free using his personal funds. He has forgone many sleeping hours to rescue birds, and he has spent the last 10 years persuading the police in Beijing to take this crime seriously.

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

So he gathered a team who did care and launched a group called the Bird Protection Unit. He held public meetings and brought in the officials of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of persuasion seem to have paid off. The police found that catching poachers also helped in tracking down other kinds of illegal operations.

"We found our objectives became somewhat shared," Silva says, noting that enforcement is still patchy.

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

He recalls exploring the grasslands on the city's edges where he discovered birds, frogs and snakes. "But starting from the 2000s, everything changed."

Industrialization brought millions of rural workers to cities. This rapid urbanisation meant grasslands were considered empty places to build, not protected zones to preserve.

The transformation was alarming. The grasslands began to shrink, as did the habitats they supported.

"I decided back then to dedicate myself to preservation and I took this path," 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 assembled several of his accomplices who surrounded 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 team of helpers over the years. This work requires patience and night vigils. Silva says few people are prepared for the challenging and occasionally risky job.

"I do this full-time," he says. "I made it a project because if you want to address this major issue, 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 support has waned because of the slowing economy.

So he has found new ways to hunt the hunters.

He studies satellite imagery to find the routes created by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' flight paths and looks for areas where they may stop for the night. The satellite images can even show lines of net traps which can catch hundreds 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 keep birds are now quite wealthy."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva believes the fines to punish the crime do not exceed the financial benefits of catching and selling songbirds.

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

It's a tradition that persists mainly among older individuals in their later years. Silva says some elderly citizens don't realise they are breaking the law, or grasp that so many more birds had to die in a trap so they could buy a caged bird.

"This generation didn't even have enough to eat growing up. Now with a little money, they have adopted the practice of keeping birds in cages," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to educate people about ecology. Once people's attitudes are formed, they're really hard to change."

Apprehended

On a long low wall in Beijing, a trader has several tiny enclosures with chirping songbirds.

Another man is positioned near a nearby 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 path by the river stretches for several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were shoppers browsing everything from vintage jewellery to false teeth.

We were told that protected birds could be bought in a nearby green space. It was easy to find.

Loud music played from a speaker in a shaded area where a troop of elderly ladies were performing a fan dance. Close by 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 today there would be no sales because the police had arrived. They were interviewing the bird owners and taking names. Unyielding, one man said he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his