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The conservationist's vision darts over miles of open meadows, searching for signs of life in the early morning gloom.

He speaks in a muted voice as we try to find a concealed position in the grasslands. Behind us, the huge urban center of Beijing has yet to wake. During the vigil, the only sound is the quiet of the morning.

And then, as the sky begins to brighten with the approaching day, the sound of footsteps emerges. 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 benefited from the extended daylight in Siberia, or Mongolia, feasting on bugs and berries. As the year winds down and icy winds bring the first frosts of winter, they journey to more temperate climates to find food and shelter.

China is home to 1500-plus bird species, accounting for 13% of the world's total – over eight hundred of those are migratory birds. Several of the major flyways they follow intersect in China.

This particular field where we were, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an haven for small birds – any further and the city skies offer little opportunity to rest among clusters of concrete.

It is also an oasis for the poachers and their "mist nets", so delicate you can almost miss them.

The one we nearly walked into was extending over half the length of the field and supported with wooden sticks. At its center, a meadow pipit 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 environment.

Hunting the Hunters

This activist, performs this duty for free using his personal funds. He has given up on many sleeping hours to release trapped birds, and he has spent the last decade 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 formed a group known as the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He held public meetings and brought in the leaders of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of advocacy seem to have paid off. The police discovered that apprehending illegal hunters also led to tracking down other kinds of illegal operations.

"It became clear our goals were partially aligned," Silva says, noting that implementation remains inconsistent.

His passion for avian life began during childhood. He was raised in the nineties in a distinct era for the city.

He remembers roaming through the fields on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, everything changed."

Industrialization brought millions of rural workers to cities. This expansion meant grasslands were viewed as empty places to build, not conservation areas to preserve.

The transformation was alarming. The grasslands receded, as did the ecosystems they sustained.

"I made the choice back then to work in conservation and I followed this course," he says.

This has not made for an easy life. One of Beijing's biggest bird dealers discovered he was being investigated by Silva and fought back.

"He gathered several of his associates who surrounded me and assaulted me," Silva remembers. He says he went to the police but those responsible were not brought to justice.

He has also lost his team of helpers over the years. This work demands covert operations and lost sleep. Silva says few people are prepared for 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 solve this big problem, you must devote yourself wholeheartedly. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan annually – but support has waned because of the economic situation.

So he has adopted new ways to track the poachers.

He studies aerial photos to find the trails worn away by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' flight paths and looks for areas where they may stop for the night. The aerial views can even show netting setups which can catch hundreds of small birds at night.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats sell for a premium," 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 reckons the fines to deter the activity do not outweigh the financial benefits of trapping and trading songbirds.

Keeping a caged bird was – and for some people in China, still is – a mark of prestige. This originates from the imperial era. Wealthy individuals would build elaborate bamboo cages for their birds.

It's a tradition that persists mainly among retired men in their later years. Silva says some elderly citizens 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 pet.

"This generation didn't even have enough to eat in their youth. Now with some disposable income, they have inherited the habit and custom of caging birds," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to raise awareness about ecology. Once people's attitudes are formed, they're extremely difficult to change."

Busted

On a long low wall in Beijing, a vendor has several small cages with tiny twittering birds.

A separate individual stands outside a local market holding a bird cage shrouded in a dark cloth. He informs passers-by discreetly that his songbird is valuable, worth nearly 1900 yuan.

This offers a view of an traditional side of the city where informal vendors have established a niche trade.

The path alongside the water extends over several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were people looking at everything from old trinkets 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 in their later years, had gathered with bird cages – some had multiple in their hands. Most were concealed by black fabric.

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