1 About the MOC

MOC – 31154 Two little birds is designed by SKABRAM and published on Rebrickable in 2025. It is an alternate build with bricks from Forest Animals: Red Fox.

 

2 Overall impressions

This is a very attractive set to look at. After I had built it, it was sitting in the entrance to my apartment and immediately caught the eyes of both grown ups and children who were visiting. The MOC consists of a couple of branches with two brown birds, one sitting on the top of the highest branch, and one sitting in the nest. The nest also contains an egg and a baby bird.

The nest is an interesting and daring variation to the trunk that is part the original Red Fox set: a 2×2 special plate with a round/octogonal bar frame with on each bar element a clip holding one eighth of trunk or nest respectively. The variation is interesting because it manages to model the chaotic but still round mesh of twigs that one can see in many bird nests. It is daring because for the nest the clips stretch out horizontally and some of them carry quite some weight.

The build has a precarious system of hinges big ( technic ball hinges ) and small ( aforementioned clips ) which make the entire set challenge gravity. The friction in the hinges seem to hold up, at least for a while, but I believe, in the very long run, gravity will win – as it always does.

Because of how the hinges are used in the design, is also quite a difficult build, as SKABRAM themselves indicates in their introductory text on Rebrickable. Getting the nest together is not easy in itself, then adding the bird on top messes it up and then adding the whole assembly to the tree, messes it up again. But it is doable with some patience.

 

3 What I have learned

I learned a few things. Firstly, how to design a bird. In fact, it uses the same approach as that is used for the Red Fox – and I assume many other animals in the Creator series. There is a central body ‘chunk’ with brackets to the side. The wings are assemblies of plates, tiles and curved elements which are then added to the sides of the chunk. The head is then added to the top. Sounds simple enough, but of course the art is in the shaping of the body, wings and head.

What I also learned is how SKABRAM took inspiration from, that is, copied and adapted the technique for the Red Fox’s trunk to make a nest. The official sets ( and MOCs ) are a source of inspiration and learning of new techniques.

 

5 Possible improvements

We will see how long gravity needs to win, but just in case it does before one breaks down the MOC, it would not be too difficult to add a few elements here and there to prevent it from winning.

One thing that could be improved is the manual. In general it works, and if the prerequisite is that one needs to be an experienced builder, then I guess it is good enough. Still, some things could be more clear.

One thing: all the little branches with leaves are prepared in different steps but then added all in one go to the main branches ( steps 54, 62 and 63 ). I would split that up: build one small branch, add it to the bigger branch, then on to the next small branch.

Another thing : in step 122, the angle could be chosen better so that it is visible that the two 1×2 plates are centered on the bracket, so that the baby bird’s head is in the middle of the body. I did not see this immediately, until in step 158, I discovered that the last part of the nest did not fit as snug as in the instructions.

 

 

 

About Mini MOC Reviews

I make no promises, but it could be that I will be writing more reviews in this format. I realized that I have been learning a lot from my own MOC making, but that I could learn a lot more from looking at other people’s MOCs.

Mini MOC Reviews are brief reviews of other people’s MOCs. They are not full blown reviews with lots of images of different build stages, historical overview of a theme, interviews with the designer. They just have three sections: Overall impressions, What have I learned, and Possible improvements.