A couple of times in the last few day I see a red bell alert icon, with a number, but when I click on it, I get my notices instead. I found that if I go to the Commons home page, I get the normal alert behavior, i.e. it will tell me that I have an alert elsewhere and give me a working link back to Wikipedia. Even with a grey bell, if I click on it in Wikipedia It says Notices. On Commons it says Alerts.

I am using Wikipedia desktop, Vector skin, on Safari Version 13.1.1 (14609.2.9.1.3), MacOS 10.14.6