I personally have found the nest with eggs in May, June, July, and during the first week of August, in various districts in the North-West Provinces, and have had them sent me from Saugor (taken in July) and from Hansi (taken in April, May, and June); but perhaps because the bird is so common scarcely any one has sent me notes about its nidification, and I hardly know whether in other parts of India and Burma its breeding-season is the same as with us.
The nest is always placed in trees, generally in a fork, near the top of good large ones; babool and mango are very commonly chosen in the North-West Provinces, though I have also found it on neem and sisso trees. It is usually built with dry twigs as a foundation, very commonly thorny and prickly twigs being used, on which the true nest, composed of fine twigs and lined with grass-roots, is constructed. The nests vary much: some are large and loosely put together, say, fully 9 inches in diameter and 6 inches in height externally; some are smaller and more densely built, and perhaps not above 7 inches in diameter and 4 inches in depth. The egg-cavity is usually about 5 inches in diameter and 2 inches in depth, but they vary very much both in size and materials; and I see that I note of one nest taken at Agra on the 3rd August—"A very shallow saucer some 6 inches in diameter, and with a central depression not above 1½ inch in depth. It was composed exclusively of roots; externally somewhat coarse, internally of somewhat finer ones. It was very loosely put together."
Five is the full complement of eggs, but it is very common to find only four fully incubated ones.
Mr. W. Blewitt writes that he "found several nests in the latter half of April, May, and the early part of June in the neighbourhood of Hansie.
"Four was the greatest number of eggs I found in any nest.
"The nests were placed in neem, keekur, and shishum trees, at heights of from 10 to 17 feet from the ground, and were densely built of twigs mostly of the keekur and shishum, and more or less thickly lined with fine straw and leaves. They varied from 6 to 8 inches in diameter and from 2 to 3 inches in depth."
Mr. A. Anderson writes:—"The Indian Magpie lays from April to July, and I have once actually seen a pair building in February. Their eggs are of two very distinct types,—the one which, according to my experience, is the ordinary one, is covered all over with reddish-brown spots or rather blotches, chiefly towards the big end, on a pale greenish-white ground, and is rather a handsome egg; the other is a pale green egg with faint brown markings, which are confined almost entirely to the obtuse end. I have another clutch of eggs taken at Budaon in 1865, which presents an intermediate variety between the above two extremes; these are profusely blotched with russet-brown on a dirty-white ground.
"The second and third nests above referred to contained five eggs; but the usual complement is not more than four. On the 2nd August, 1872, I made the following note relative to the breeding of this bird:—The bird flew off immediately we approached the tree, and never appeared again. The nest viewed from below looked larger; this is owing to dry babool twigs or rather small branches (some of them having thorns from an inch to 2 inches long!) having been used as a foundation, and actually encircling the nest, no doubt by way of protection against vermin; some of these thorny twigs were a foot long, and they had to be removed piecemeal before the nest proper could be got at. The egg-cavity is deep, measuring 5 inches in depth by 4 in breadth inside measurement; it is well lined with khus grass."
Major Bingham says:—
"Common as is this bird I have only found one nest, and that was at Allahabad on the 9th July, and contained one half-fledged young one and an addled egg. The nest, which was placed at the very top of a large mango-tree, was constructed of branches and twigs of the same lined with fine grass-roots. The egg is a yellowish white, thickly speckled, chiefly at the large end, with rusty. Length 1·10 by 0·82 in breadth."