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The conservationist's vision darts across miles of tall grassland, looking for suspicious activity in the inky blackness.

He utters a muted voice as the team seeks a concealed position in the grasslands. Behind us, the huge urban center of Beijing remains asleep. During the vigil, we hear only our own breath.

And then, as the sky turns a shade lighter with the approaching day, there is the crunch of footsteps. The poachers are here.

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 utilized the warmer months in northern regions, feasting on bugs and berries. As the year nears its end and chilling gusts bring the first frosts of winter, they head to warmer places to find food and shelter.

The nation hosts over 1500 bird species, accounting for thirteen percent of the world's total – more than 800 of those are birds that migrate. Four of the nine major flyways they follow cross through China.

The area of meadow in question, on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, is an refuge for small birds – farther in and the urban landscape offer scant chance to rest among forests of concrete.

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

The one we nearly walked into was strung across a large section of the field and held up with wooden sticks. In the middle, a tiny bird was fighting hard to free his legs, but the more it moved, the more its claws became tangled.

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

Pursuing the Poachers

Silva, who is in his 30s, performs this duty for free using his own savings. He has sacrificed many nights of sleep to set songbirds free, 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 enlisted helpers who did care and established a group known as the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He organized community gatherings and invited the heads of the relevant authorities. These consistent and determined acts of advocacy have shown results. The police found that catching poachers also led to tracking down other kinds of illegal operations.

"It became clear our objectives became partially aligned," 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 remembers roaming through the fields on the city's edges where he encountered birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, the transformation was dramatic."

Rapid economic growth brought millions of rural workers to cities. This expansion meant grasslands were viewed as empty places to build, not sanctuaries to preserve.

The transformation was alarming. The grasslands started disappearing, as did the wildlife they housed.

"I made the choice back then to work in conservation and I took this path," 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 held accountable.

He has also lost 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.

"I do this full-time," he says. "I treat it as a mission because if you want to solve this big problem, you must give it your all. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says donations pays for some of the costs – more than 100,000 yuan annually – but funding has declined because of the economic situation.

So he has adopted new ways to track the poachers.

He studies aerial photos to find the paths 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 satellite images can even show lines of net traps which can catch hundreds of small birds at night.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats command a premium," Silva says. "In big cities like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to own songbirds are now often affluent."

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

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

This custom that continues mainly among retired men in their later years. Silva says some elderly citizens don't realise they are committing a wildlife crime, or grasp that so many more birds had to die in a trap for them to purchase a caged bird.

"These individuals often lacked enough to eat in their youth. Now with a little money, they have adopted the practice of keeping birds in cages," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was little opportunity 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 vendor has several tiny enclosures 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 quietly that his songbird is valuable, worth about 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse 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 typical day, there were people looking at everything from old trinkets to dentures.

We were told that wild songbirds could be purchased in a small park. The location was not concealed.

Loud music played from a speaker under the low trees where a troop of elderly ladies were performing 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 sales because the police had arrived. They were questioning the bird owners and taking names. Unyielding, one man said he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his