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Silva Gu's gaze sweeps over vast expanses of tall grassland, looking for signs of life in the early morning gloom.

He utters a muted voice as they attempt to locate a concealed position in the fields. In the distance, the huge urban center of Beijing remains asleep. As we wait, the only sound is the quiet of the morning.

Suddenly, as the sky begins to brighten with the approaching day, there is the crunch of footsteps. The poachers are here.

Trapped

Across the heavens, countless migratory birds, many so small that they can fit in the palm of your hand, are traveling to the south for winter.

They have utilized the warmer months in northern regions, feasting on insects and fruit. As the year comes to a close and cold breezes bring the early cold of winter, they head to warmer places to breed and eat.

There are 1500-plus bird species, which is about thirteen percent of the global population – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major migration routes they follow cross through China.

The patch of grassland in question, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – any further and the urban landscape offer scant chance to rest among towering rows of concrete.

It is equally attractive for the poachers and their "barely visible nets", so fine you can hardly spot them.

The one we nearly walked into was stretched across a large section of the field and held up with bamboo poles. At its center, a meadow pipit was desperately trying to free his legs, but the more it struggled, the more its claws became tangled.

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

Hunting the Hunters

Silva, who is in his 30s, carries out this mission for free using his personal funds. He has sacrificed many sleeping hours to rescue birds, and he has spent the last decade urging the police in Beijing to take this crime seriously.

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

So he gathered a team who did care and launched a group known as the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He held public meetings and brought in the officials of the local police and forestry bureau. These consistent and determined acts of advocacy have shown results. The police found that catching poachers also helped in tracking down other kinds of criminal activity.

"We found our goals were somewhat shared," Silva says, noting that implementation remains inconsistent.

Silva's love of birds began during childhood. He grew up in the 1990s in a very different Beijing.

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

Industrialization brought millions of rural workers to cities. This fast-paced development meant grasslands were considered land for construction, not protected zones to preserve.

This shift shocked him. The grasslands receded, as did the ecosystems they sustained.

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

It has not been an simple journey. One of Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was being investigated by Silva and fought back.

"He assembled several of his associates who surrounded me and beat me up," Silva remembers. He says he reported to the police but the perpetrators were not held accountable.

He has also lost his army of volunteers over the years. This work requires 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 made it a project because if you want to tackle this challenge, you must give it your all. You can't do it part-time."

He says donations 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 studies aerial photos to find the routes created by the poachers. He maps those against the birds' migratory routes and looks for areas where they may rest. The satellite images can even show lines of net traps which can capture scores 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 wildlife laws in place, Silva argues the fines to deter the activity do not outweigh the financial benefits of trapping and trading songbirds.

Owning a pet bird was – and for some generations in China, still is – a status symbol. This originates from the Qing dynasty. Wealthy individuals would build elaborate bamboo cages to display their birds.

This custom that continues mainly among older individuals in their 60s or 70s. Silva says older Chinese people don't realise they are committing a wildlife crime, or understand 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 inherited the practice of caging birds," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to educate people about the environment. Once adults' values are set, they're really hard to change."

Apprehended

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

Another man stands outside a nearby market holding a bird cage shrouded in a black veil. He tells passers-by quietly that his songbird is valuable, worth about 1900 yuan.

This offers a view of an traditional side of the city where informal vendors 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 wild songbirds could be bought in a small park. The location was not concealed.

Music was blasting from a speaker in a shaded area where a troop 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 dark cloth.

But on this occasion there would be no sales because the police had arrived. 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