alt Hacker NewsWe just started doing meaningful bird photography (as opposed to true birdwatching) last year and I agree with you.
The couple of times we've gone with guides who are serious birdwatchers, it is impressive to watch their abilities in this area of multimodal species identification (and male/female/adult/juvenile) in challenging visual and audio environments (and recall of species names in Latin, English, and Spanish).
Meanwhile I'm out there with my camera like "Hey, look at that beautiful red+blue bird!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've been in the hobby for a little over 5 years and the gulf between me when I began and me now is huge. And then I look at people like the experienced guides you mentioned and it's night and day again!
They have access to the same information as the rest of us (sight, sound, general awareness of season and habitat) but their inference is so amazingly fast and accurate.