The aircraft/bird example is good. I too, can recognize aircraft easily, because I've seen a lot of them (both real and in photos/videos/drawings/3d models), and the distinctions mattered to me. Show me a bird photo, and a while later, give me a book containing this very photo + 50 others, and I most likely won't be able to find the one I've seen. Definitely not by any clues on the bird itself. It seems to me that you need some commonality with a whole category of objects before you even start paying attention to details of individual objects.