I was trying to shoot two birds in one shot. It was very cloudy and muddy. Light reflecting from water does not make life any easier. Trying to enhance using my limited understanding of masks based on latest videos by @s7habo. Goal was to do some sort of magic that Boris does and enhance birds or make them more visible and reduce distracting glare of water.
This files here are licensed with Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.
20230311_0008.ARW (20.3 MB)
Here is my simple masking attempt to create a vignette using exposure modules to highlight the birds. Probably the vignette looks too obvious on this edit.
20230311_0008.ARW.xmp (11.2 KB)
Well, I’m not Boris (if there was any doubt LOL) and this is about all I can do:
20230311_0008.ARW.arp (60.1 KB)
ART 1.18.1, exported as JPG in Affinity Photo
This seems almost like a pathological worst-case processing scenario. 
It really demands localized editing. Taken globally, almost any edit for the benefit of one part will negatively affect others. I cropped it to further help emphasize the subjects, then applied local edits via masks in ART (mostly tonal and local contrast) to try and get a bit more separation. I added both a vignette and a gradient at the bottom to further focus attention.
Gimp. Very tricky! A couple of attempts to make the birds stand out from the background, but I have done horrible things to the appearance of the water!
This was a tricky one, especially separating the neck and head of the grey heron from the rather messy background. Here is my attempt in darktable 4.2.1.
Highlighting the wave in the water and painting the green algae? grass?
dt 4.2.1
This is an impossible task for me, I could spend a week working on it without getting the work done. It’s like a game of “Where is Waldo/Willy?”. Anyway…
20230311_0008_01.ARW.xmp (26.0 KB)
Ancient music notation, now.
Hi,
Nice birds. Not an edit more a composition suggestion - get down in the mud, lay on your belly and support the camera on a “ground pod”. Duade Paton shows one in use photographing waterbirds. You can make one from an old frying pan. (I like open source solutions)
