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Silva Gu's eyes scan over miles of tall grassland, looking for signs of life in the inky blackness.

He speaks in less than a whisper as the team seeks a concealed position in the grasslands. Behind us, the sprawling city of Beijing remains asleep. During the vigil, the only sound is the quiet of the morning.

And then, as the sky begins to brighten with the approaching day, we hear footsteps. Illegal trappers are present.

Trapped

Overhead, countless migratory birds, some tiny enough that they can fit in the cup of a hand, are traveling to the south for winter.

They have benefited from the long summer days in northern regions, eating insects and fruit. As the year nears its end and cold breezes bring the early cold of winter, they are flying to warmer places to breed and eat.

China is home to more than 1,500 bird species, representing roughly 13% of the world's total – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major flyways they follow cross through China.

This particular field where we were, on the edges of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – farther in and the urban landscape offer few options to rest among forests of concrete.

It is also an oasis for the poachers and their "fine 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 bamboo poles. At its center, a small finch was fighting hard to untangle itself, but the more it struggled, the more its feet got ensnared.

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

Pursuing the Poachers

Silva, who is in his 30s, carries out this mission for free using his own savings. He has given up on many sleeping hours to rescue birds, and he has spent the last decade persuading the police in Beijing to take this crime seriously.

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

So he gathered a team who did care and established a group known as the Bird Protection Unit. He organized community gatherings and brought in the heads of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of persuasion have shown results. The police found that apprehending illegal hunters also helped in tracking down other kinds of illegal operations.

"It became clear our objectives became somewhat shared," Silva says, while pointing out that implementation remains inconsistent.

His passion for avian life began during childhood. He was raised in the 1990s in a very different Beijing.

He recalls roaming through the grasslands on the city's edges where he discovered birds, frogs and snakes. "But starting from the 2000s, the transformation was dramatic."

Rapid economic growth brought millions of rural workers to cities. This rapid urbanisation meant grasslands were seen as empty places to build, not protected zones to preserve.

This shift shocked him. The grasslands receded, as did the habitats they supported.

"I decided back then to work in conservation and I took this path," he says.

It has not been an easy life. One of 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 reported to the police but those responsible were not brought to justice.

He has also seen the departure of his army of volunteers over the years. This work demands stealth and sleepless nights. 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 devote yourself wholeheartedly. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says fundraising pays for some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan a year – but support has waned because of the slowing economy.

So he has developed new ways to track the poachers.

He analyzes satellite imagery to find the paths created by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' migratory routes and looks for areas where they may stop for the night. The satellite images can even show netting setups which can catch scores of small birds at night.

"Certain prized species sell for a high price," Silva says. "In big cities like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to keep birds are now quite wealthy."

While there are environmental regulations in place, Silva argues the penalties to punish the crime 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 status symbol. This dates back to the imperial era. Nobles and elites would build ornate bamboo cages for their birds.

It's a tradition that continues mainly among older individuals in their 60s or 70s. Silva says older Chinese people may not understand 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 a little money, they have inherited the habit and custom of caging birds," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to educate people about ecology. Once adults' values are set, they're really hard to change."

Apprehended

Along a riverside path in Beijing, a trader has several small cages with chirping songbirds.

A separate individual stands outside a local market holding a bird cage covered by a black veil. He informs passers-by discreetly that his songbird is rare, worth nearly 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an old Beijing where small unofficial traders have created their own market.

The path by the river stretches for several miles and on a typical day, there were shoppers browsing everything from old trinkets to dentures.

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

Music was blasting from a speaker under the low trees where a group of elderly ladies were performing a traditional dance. Nearby several men, all in their later years, had gathered with bird cages – some had two or three in their hands. Most were covered in black fabric.

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