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The conservationist's eyes scan over miles of open meadows, hunting for signs of life in the early morning gloom.

He utters less than a whisper as we try to find a place of cover in the grasslands. In the distance, the huge urban center of Beijing remains asleep. As we wait, the only sound is the sound of breathing.

And then, as the sky starts to lighten before dawn, there is the crunch of footsteps. Illegal trappers are present.

Caught

Overhead, billions of birds, some tiny enough that they could rest in the palm of your hand, are traveling to the south for winter.

They have taken advantage of the warmer months in Siberia, or Mongolia, feasting on insects and fruit. As the year winds down and chilling gusts bring the first frosts of winter, they journey to warmer places to breed and eat.

There are 1500-plus bird species, accounting for 13% of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are migratory birds. Four of the nine major migration routes they follow cross through China.

The area of meadow where we were, on the fringes 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 "mist nets", so thin you can barely see them.

The one we nearly walked into was extending over half the length of the field and propped up with bamboo poles. In the middle, a small finch was struggling frantically to free his legs, but the more it struggled, the more its claws became tangled.

This was a protected songbird, a protected bird in China, and an important "indicator species" – which signifies if its population is healthy, so is its environment.

Tracking the Trappers

Silva, who is in his 30s, performs this duty for free using his personal funds. He has given up on many nights of sleep to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last 10 years urging the police in Beijing to prioritize this issue.

"In the early days, authorities were indifferent," he says.

So he enlisted helpers who did care and launched a group known as the Bird Protection Unit. He held public meetings and invited the leaders of the relevant authorities. These consistent and determined acts of persuasion appear to have worked. The police realized that catching poachers also led to tracking down other kinds of criminal activity.

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

His passion for avian life started in childhood. He was raised in the 1990s in a distinct era for the city.

He recalls wandering in the fields on the city's edges where he encountered birds, frogs and snakes. "But starting from the 2000s, everything changed."

Industrialization brought a huge influx of rural workers to cities. This rapid urbanisation meant grasslands were seen as land for construction, not conservation areas to conserve.

The transformation was alarming. 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.

It has not been an easy life. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was being investigated by Silva and retaliated.

"He gathered several of his accomplices who surrounded me and beat me up," 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 few people are willing to take on the challenging and occasionally risky 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 pays for some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan a year – but donations have dipped because of the economic situation.

So he has adopted new ways to hunt the hunters.

He analyzes aerial photos to find the paths created by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' migratory routes and looks for areas where they may rest. The aerial views can even show lines of net traps which can catch scores of small birds at night.

"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 often affluent."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva argues the penalties to deter the activity do not outweigh the potential profits of catching and selling songbirds.

Owning a pet bird was – and for some generations in China, still is – a mark of prestige. This originates from the Qing dynasty. Nobles and elites would build elaborate 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 committing a wildlife crime, or grasp that so many more birds were killed in a trap so they could buy a pet.

"These individuals didn't even have enough to eat in their youth. Now with a little money, they have inherited the practice of caging birds," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was little opportunity to raise awareness about the environment. Once adults' values are formed, they're really hard to change."

Busted

On a long low wall 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 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 area alongside the water extends over several miles and on a typical day, there were people looking at everything from vintage jewellery to false teeth.

Information suggested that protected birds could be purchased in a nearby green space. The location was not concealed.

Loud music played from a speaker under the low trees where a group of elderly ladies were choreographing a traditional dance. Close by 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 sales because the police had appeared. They were interviewing the bird owners and taking names. Defiant, one man said he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his