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Silva Gu's eyes scan over miles of tall grassland, hunting for suspicious activity in the pre-dawn darkness.

He utters less than a whisper as they attempt to locate a spot to hide in the grasslands. Behind us, the vast metropolis of Beijing remains asleep. During the vigil, the only sound is the quiet of the morning.

And then, as the sky begins to brighten ahead of sunrise, there is the crunch of footsteps. The hunters have arrived.

Trapped

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

They have taken advantage of the extended daylight in northern regions, consuming bugs and berries. As the year comes to a close and icy winds bring the first frosts of winter, they journey to southern locales to breed and eat.

China is home to 1500-plus bird species, which is about 13% of the global population – over eight hundred of those are birds that migrate. Four of the nine major migration routes they follow intersect in China.

The area of meadow where we were, on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – farther in 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 barely see them.

A net we almost encountered was strung across a large section of the field and held up with bamboo poles. In the middle, a tiny bird was desperately trying to escape, but the more it struggled, the more its feet got ensnared.

This was a protected songbird, a protected bird in China, and an important "bio-indicator" – meaning if its numbers are thriving, so is its ecosystem.

Hunting the Hunters

This activist, performs this duty for free using his own savings. He has given up on many sleeping hours to rescue birds, and he has spent the last decade urging the police in Beijing to prioritize this issue.

"Initially, authorities were indifferent," he states.

So he enlisted helpers who were concerned and formed a group called the Bird Protection Unit. He held public meetings and brought in the officials of the relevant authorities. These small and persistent acts of advocacy have shown results. The police discovered that apprehending illegal hunters also led to identifying other kinds of illegal operations.

"We found our objectives became somewhat shared," Silva says, noting that the response is not uniform.

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

He recalls roaming through the fields on the city's edges where he discovered birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, the transformation was dramatic."

China's booming economy brought millions of rural workers to cities. This fast-paced development meant grasslands were seen as land for construction, not sanctuaries to preserve.

This shift shocked him. The grasslands began to shrink, as did the ecosystems they sustained.

"I made the choice back then to pursue environmental protection and I took this path," he says.

This has not made for an simple journey. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers discovered he was being investigated by Silva and retaliated.

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

He has also seen the departure of his team of helpers over the years. This work requires patience and night vigils. Silva says not many 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 tackle this challenge, you must devote yourself wholeheartedly. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan annually – but funding has declined because of the slowing economy.

So he has adopted new ways to track the poachers.

He examines satellite imagery to find the paths created by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' flight paths and looks for areas where they may rest. The aerial views can even show netting setups which can catch hundreds 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 wildlife laws in place, Silva believes the fines to punish the crime do not outweigh the financial benefits of catching and selling songbirds.

Keeping a caged 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 continues mainly among retired men in their later years. Silva says some elderly citizens don't realise they are breaking the law, or grasp that numerous birds had to die in a trap for them to purchase a caged bird.

"This generation didn't even have enough to eat in their youth. Now with a little money, they have inherited the practice of keeping birds in cages," he says. "The nation progressed so fast, there was no time to educate people about ecology. Once people's attitudes are formed, they're really hard to change."

Disrupted

On a long low wall in Beijing, a vendor has several tiny enclosures with chirping songbirds.

Another man is positioned near a nearby market holding a bird cage covered by a dark cloth. He tells passers-by discreetly that his songbird is rare, 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 alongside the water stretches for several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were shoppers browsing everything from old trinkets to false teeth.

Information suggested that protected birds 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 choreographing a fan dance. Nearby several men, all over 50, 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 arrived. They were interviewing the bird owners and recording details. Defiant, one man said he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his