BANYUMAS, Indonesia — As youngsters, Ari and Junianto would clamber over the upland above Sambirata village, gathering sap to glue-trap the birds nesting below Java’s Mount Slamet. “If it gets wet it’ll lose its stickiness, so you’d have to place it during the day,” Junianto, now in his mid-30s, told Mongabay Indonesia as he pressed on through thin mist up Mount Slamet together with Ari. A mother Javan blue flycatcher (Cyornis banyumas) is seen feeding her young in their nest. Image courtesy of Burung Indonesia/Jihad. Junianto learned to trap birds in the fourth grade. Before long, hunting had become his primary occupation. Often he would carry a small snake as bait for bigger birds. Within half an hour, they’d usually catch a white-eye (from the Zosteropidae family) or an olive bulbul (Iole viridescens) — both are greenish songbirds — somewhere between 800 and 1500 meters (2,600 and 4,900 feet) up the mountain. Junianto, a former bird hunter, is now a conservation activist. Image by L. Darmawan for Mongabay Indonesia. Their contact lists grew as they became more experienced hunters. Junianto began stockpiling birds from other hunters that he supplied to traders in the neighboring city of Purwokerto. Ari, meanwhile, branched out into selling species on social media. Between 2011 and 2012, he sold not just songbirds, but also slow lorises (Nycticebus coucang), sugar gliders (Petaurus breviceps) and even Javan hawk-eagles (Nisaetus bartelsi), Indonesia’s national bird — the equivalent of trading bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in the U.S. Ari recalled earlier…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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