Dr. Jerdon remarks:—"The Lepchas at Darjeeling brought me the nest, which was said to have been placed high up in a large tree; it was composed of twigs and roots and a few bits of grass, and contained two eggs, livid white, with purplish and claret spots, and of a very elongated form."
The Jobraj, according to Mr. Hodgson's notes and figures, begins to lay in Nepal in April. It builds a large shallow nest, 8 or 9 inches in diameter externally, with the cavity of about half that diameter, attached, as a rule, to the slender branches of some horizontal fork, between which it is suspended much like that of an Oriole, though much shallower than this latter; it is composed of small twigs, fine roots, and grass-stems bound together, and it is attached to the branches by vegetable fibre, and more or less coated with cobwebs; little pieces of lichen and moss are also blended in the nest. It lays three or four eggs, rather pyriform in shape, measuring 1·25 by 0·86 inch, with a whitish or pinky-whitish ground, speckled and spotted pretty well all over, but most densely towards the large end, with reddish pink.
From Sikhim Mr. Gammie writes:—"I took two nests of the Hair-crested Drongo this year in June, both at about an elevation of 1500 feet in wooded valleys, placed well up in the outer branches of tall, slender trees; they are of a broad saucer-shape, openly but firmly made of roots and stems of slender climbers, and destitute of lining. There is a good deal of cobweb on the outsides of the nests, and they were attached to the supporting branches by the same material. One was fixed in among several upright sprays, the other suspended in a slender fork after the manner of an Oriole. They measured about 6 inches broad by 2¼ deep externally, internally 4 by 1¾. One nest contained four fresh eggs, the other three partially-incubated eggs."
Mr. Oates, writing from Pegu, says:—"In the first week of May I took several nests of this bird, but in all cases the nests were situated in such dangerous places that most of the eggs got broken; there were three in each nest. The position of the nest and the nest itself are very much like those of D. paradiseus. Comparing many nests of both species together, the only difference appears to be that the nests of the Hair-crested Drongo are slightly larger on the whole.
"The only two eggs saved measure 1·10 by ·8 and 1·11 by ·81; they are slightly glossy, dull white, minutely and thickly freckled and spotted with reddish brown and pale underlying marks of neutral tint.
"I may add that at the commencement of May all the eggs were much incubated."
Major C.T. Bingham remarks:—"During the breeding season in the end of March and in April I saw a great number of nests round and about Meeawuddy in Tenasserim, but all inaccessible, as they were invariably built out at the very end of the thinnest branches of eng, teak, thingan (Hopea odorata), and other trees.
"Except during those two months, I have not seen the bird plentiful anywhere."
Mr. J.R. Cripps has written the following valuable notes regarding the breeding of the Hair-crested Drongo in the Dibrugarh district in Assam:—
"17th May, 1879. Nest with three fresh eggs, attached to a fork in one of the outer brandies of an otinga (Dillenia pentagyna) tree, and about 15 feet off the ground.