Harvey and the Magpie

The past few weeks, Harvey has found a nemesis in the neighborhood. There is a magpie that he hates and that hates him. Every morning we hear that weird magpie noise and look out to see Harvey fighting a magpie. At first we thought they were okay with each other. The magpie would walk around maybe 5 feet from Harvey and Harvey would just ignore it. Then one day while we were eating dinner, Harvey was walking around the railing on our deck and a magpie swooped down, landed behind Harvey and started pecking at him. Harvey doesn't have the most incredible balance, especially for a cat, and he didn't do a good job defending himself since he couldn't turn around to face the magpie. The bird flew off when we jumped up from the table to get a better look at what was going on. Ever since then every time Harvey goes outside we hear a magpie and see them facing off. No wounds yet, and we hope they they keep it clean, but magpies are annoying dirty birds, and we hope that it doesn't fight dirty. It has been hard to get good video of them fighting since they both will bolt when they see us coming. We did manage to get these two videos where Harvey seems to have the upper hand (sorry the second video is sideways).