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The activist's vision darts across miles of dense fields, searching for suspicious activity in the early morning gloom.

He speaks in less than a whisper as we try to find a place of cover in the open area. Behind us, the huge urban center of Beijing slumbers on. During the vigil, we hear only the quiet of the morning.

And then, as the sky starts to lighten before dawn, there is the crunch of footsteps. The poachers are here.

Snared

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

They have benefited from the warmer months in Siberia, or Mongolia, consuming insects and fruit. As the year comes to a close and chilling gusts bring the first frosts of winter, they journey to southern locales to find food and shelter.

China is home to 1500-plus bird species, representing roughly 13% of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are migratory birds. Several of the major paths they follow cross through China.

This particular field where we were, on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, is an haven for small birds – farther in 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 thin you can hardly spot them.

A net we almost encountered was stretched across a large section of the field and held up with bamboo poles. At its center, a meadow pipit was struggling frantically to free his legs, but the more it moved, the more its claws became tangled.

This was a meadow pipit, a protected bird in China, and an important "indicator species" – meaning if its population is healthy, so is its ecosystem.

Hunting the Hunters

Silva, who is in his 30s, does this work for free using his personal funds. He has sacrificed many sleeping hours to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last 10 years convincing the police in Beijing to take this crime seriously.

"In the early days, no-one cared," he says.

So he recruited volunteers who were concerned and established a group known as the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He organized community gatherings and brought in the officials of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of advocacy seem to have paid off. The police realized that apprehending illegal hunters also led to identifying other kinds of illegal operations.

"It became clear our goals were somewhat shared," Silva says, adding the caveat that implementation remains inconsistent.

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

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

Industrialization brought millions of rural workers to cities. This expansion meant grasslands were considered empty places to build, not sanctuaries to preserve.

This shift shocked him. The grasslands began to shrink, as did the habitats they supported.

"I decided back then to pursue environmental protection and I chose this direction," he says.

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

"He gathered several of his accomplices who confronted me and assaulted me," Silva recalls. He says he went to the police but the perpetrators 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 not many are prepared for the difficult – and sometimes dangerous job.

"I do this full-time," he says. "I made it a project because if you want to solve this big problem, you must commit completely. You can't do it part-time."

He says donations 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 track the poachers.

He studies aerial photos to find the routes worn away by the poachers. He charts these 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 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 wildlife laws in place, Silva believes the penalties to punish the crime do not exceed the financial benefits of catching and selling 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 continues mainly among retired men in their later years. Silva says older Chinese people may not understand 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 a little money, they have inherited the habit and custom of caging birds," he says. "China developed so fast, there was little opportunity to educate people about ecology. Once adults' values are set, they're extremely difficult to change."

Busted

Along a riverside path in Beijing, a vendor has several small cages with tiny twittering birds.

A separate individual stands outside a nearby market holding a bird cage shrouded in a black veil. He informs passers-by quietly that his songbird is rare, worth about 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an old Beijing where informal vendors have created their own market.

The area by the river stretches for several miles and on a typical day, there were people looking at everything from old trinkets to false teeth.

Information suggested that wild songbirds 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 choreographing 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 on this occasion there would be no transactions because the police had appeared. They were interviewing the bird owners and taking names. Defiant, one man claimed he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his