Many are the lamentations and lacrimations I've heard from American birders like myself about identifying certain groups of the New World birds. The Empidonax flycatchers, sparrows, shearwaters (legitimate) are the most commonly heard of as being hard to identify. British birders who come here don't understand what we're complaining about, because they have Phylloscopus warblers, which looks incredibly like each other and often a very close look is necessary to ID them. Birders from Africa come to Britain and ask what they're complaining about because they have Cisitcolas. If you were to ask me to define the quintessential little brown job, I would tell you to go look at Cisticolas.
The members of the family Cisticolidae are about as cryptic a croup as you'll ever find. Every single one looks almost exactly the same. They're very small, brownish, with short little bills, short tails and very robust personalities. Cisticolas can usually be identified by those that aren't intimately familiar with them, by their call, which are luckily quite distinct. The Stout Cisticola - Cisticola robustus (above) is actually pretty distinctive in appearance comparatively. I photographed this individual on the Masai Mara and spent a good hour trying to identify it. We finally decided on Stout Cisticola, partly because it looked and sounded like one, and partly because we were tired of trying to ID it.
So for your enjoyment, I present the most nondescript bird group in the world. The Cisticolas
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