London's streets can be challenging for wildlife, but some species are more than capable of rising to that challenge. Meet the magpie, now happily at home across the capital.

This cocky corvid boasts a snowwhite belly and shoulders, which contrast vividly with its carbon black tail and wing feathers, which glimmer with flashes of iridescent blues and greens. The tail is as long as the body, the elongated feathers neatly folded when not fanned for flight.

Magpies thrive in the city because they are both intelligent and adaptable. They are omnivorous, with a wide diet that includes invertebrates, berries and roadkill. They will feed from bird tables and waste bins, raid nests in the spring, and can catch small mammals and birds. Their nestraiding abilities make them unpopular with some, but decades of research, examined by the British Trust for Ornithology, shows no evidence that magpies diminish songbird populations.

Magpies are vocal, sociable birds, chattering to each other in harsh, staccato chirps and calls. They build large, rounded nests high in the trees, but their abundant numbers mean that many will be unable to pair up and secure breeding territories of their own. Unattached birds hang out in small, roaming bands of both sexes, exploring larger territories than breeding pairs, which remain close to their nests.

Numbers have increased significantly since the Sixties, especially in urban and suburban locations, and have now stabilised, with perhaps a slight fall in recent years. In the countryside, magpie still face persecution, trapped by gamekeepers to reduce predation on the eggs and fledglings of game birds, raised for the shoot.

As is often the case, the city can be safer than the countryside.

London Wildlife Trust campaigns to protect the capital's wildlife and wild spaces. Backed by Sir David Attenborough President Emeritus of The Wildlife Trusts.