The look at the stories making the headlines with insights from the BBC's global network of

experts. Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. It's 4 30 a.m. and we're walking along a dusty track on the south coast of Cyprus on our way to monitor

an notorious trapping site.

Apparently the site is run by a criminal gang so we've parked the car a few kilometers away and

are walking in under cover of darkness apart from it's not that dark because it's a

full moon tonight the hills and the scrub around us illuminated

by this beautiful silvery light.

I'm Antonio Bollingbrook-Kent and I'm on a surveillance operation in Cyprus with two undercover investigators.

It's estimated that hundreds of thousands of migrating songbirds are illegally trapped and killed here every autumn and used to make a dish the locals call

Ambalabulia.

Eating songbirds is a centuries-old tradition in much of the Eastern Mediterranean, but here it's

become a multi-million dollar criminal industry.

They're aware there's potentially people watching them,

so you have to bear that in mind here and take precautions.

You know, we know some of these trappers are violent people and

even police officers have been quite badly assaulted. There's a fairly

unpleasant selection of individuals involved in this. We just had to stop and

hide behind a bush because we saw the lights of a car driving past about 100 meters away

and our guys have never seen a car up here before so we're very concerned that it was a Trappers car so we all had to hide.

We're in this very open scrubby area.

Okay, it's quite nerve, okay.

Okay.

...