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Silva Gu's gaze sweeps over vast expanses of open meadows, looking for signs of life in the pre-dawn darkness.

He utters a muted voice as the team seeks a concealed position in the grasslands. In the distance, the sprawling city of Beijing remains asleep. As we wait, we hear only our own breath.

Suddenly, as the sky begins to brighten ahead of sunrise, the sound of footsteps emerges. The poachers are here.

Trapped

In the skies above us, billions of birds, some tiny enough that they can fit in the palm of your hand, are migrating south for winter.

They have taken advantage of the extended daylight in Siberia, or Mongolia, eating insects and fruit. As the year nears its end and cold breezes bring the early cold of winter, they head to more temperate climates to find food and shelter.

There are over 1500 bird species, which is about thirteen percent of the global population – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major flyways they follow intersect in China.

The area of meadow where we were, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – any further and the city skies offer little opportunity to rest among forests of concrete.

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

The one we nearly walked into was extending over half the length of the field and held up with wooden sticks. At its center, a small finch was fighting hard to free his legs, but the more it moved, the more its feet got ensnared.

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

Tracking the Trappers

Silva, who is in his 30s, does this work for free using his personal funds. He has forgone many sleeping hours to set songbirds free, and he has spent the last decade urging the police in Beijing to enforce the law.

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

So he recruited volunteers who did care and formed a group known as the Bird Protection Unit. He organized public meetings and invited the leaders of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of persuasion have shown results. The police found that catching poachers also led to identifying other kinds of criminal activity.

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

Silva's love of birds started in childhood. He was raised in the 1990s 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."

Rapid economic growth brought a huge influx of rural workers to cities. This expansion meant grasslands were viewed as areas for development, not conservation areas to conserve.

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

"I made the choice 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 being investigated by Silva and retaliated.

"He assembled several of his accomplices who confronted me and beat me up," Silva remembers. He says he reported to the police but the perpetrators were not brought to justice.

He has also lost his team of helpers over the years. This work demands stealth and sleepless nights. 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 solve this big problem, you must commit completely. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan annually – but funding has declined because of the slowing economy.

So he has developed new ways to track the poachers.

He examines satellite imagery to find the trails 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 scores of small birds at night.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats sell for a high price," Silva says. "In urban centers like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to own songbirds are now quite wealthy."

Although there are wildlife laws in place, Silva reckons 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 generations in China, still is – a mark of prestige. This originates from the imperial era. Wealthy individuals would build ornate bamboo cages to display their birds.

This custom that persists mainly among older individuals in their later years. Silva says older Chinese people may not understand they are breaking the law, or understand that numerous birds were killed in a trap so they could buy a pet.

"These individuals often lacked enough to eat growing up. Now with some disposable income, they have adopted the habit and custom of keeping birds in cages," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was little opportunity to educate people about the environment. Once adults' values are set, they're really hard to change."

Disrupted

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

A separate individual is positioned near a nearby market holding a bird cage covered by a dark cloth. He informs passers-by quietly that his songbird is rare, worth about 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an traditional side of the city where informal vendors have created their own market.

The area alongside the water stretches for several miles and on a typical day, there were shoppers browsing everything from vintage jewellery to dentures.

We were told that protected birds could be bought in a nearby green space. The location was not concealed.

Music was blasting from a speaker in a shaded area where a group of elderly ladies were choreographing a fan dance. Close by several men, all over 50, had congregated with bird cages – some had two or three in their hands. Most were concealed by dark cloth.

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