With form-recognition skills like that you are way ahead of me. I would imagine that
you could ID a bird in seconds just by its shape, something not everyone can do because
they cannot see shape well, just like some people can't recognize faces well.
You could be an illustrator of a bird book. The first bird book I owned featured drawings
instead of photographs, which was always more engaging anyway. What is more, the
drawings exaggerated certain cardinal features that make ID possible in the field.
In other words, it left the viewer with an image that closely resembles what one might
rightly recall from having seen the bird in the field because those special characteristic
are the ones that stick in your mind best. A scale modeler often exaggerates parts of
a model that are not necessarily the way they would look at scale, but those subtle
elaborations are FAR more satisfying to the viewer than true scale. The drawing of bird
works in the same way. The artist can cut through the myriad of clutter (superfluous details)
and capture the essence of a species and therefore offer a better reference guide that the absolute fidelity
of a photograph. You could marry photographer and artist, two skills most of us cannot recruit.
I always said I can only identify what I have had the good fortune to photograph. If you draw every
bird you encounter, or photograph, you will remember it for life.
