After a lot of running in thorny dry forest, we reached, late in the afternoon, this Subdesert mesite that one of the local guides found in a tree. Usually they are active on the ground in a special dry forest in Madagascar called "spiny forest" with e.g. baobab trees, but this male had climbed up a bit, perhaps to avoid predators during the night. This bird is one of the strangest I have come across. Females and males are different, the females have a brownish, darker breast. They are polygamous and live in collective family groups of up to nine individuals. Incidentally, the species is only found here in the dry forest in a limited area in southwestern Madagascar.