10.15 am. A flutter of wings at wheel height  in front of me resolves into a blackbird. I’m driving slowly through our semi-underground carpark. The blackbird- is it the one I hear singing?- perches on the yellow metal rail above a tumble of tethered bikes. It settles its feathers and does a little jump.

The carpark is half underground and the top level to the open air is enclosed by a metal grille, too narrow for a blackbird to fly through. I hope it can eventually get out by following a car.

11.35 am. Back home and I’m vaguely looking at the sky and bustling clouds, with coffee in hand. A creamy flash of the underside of a bird banking hard against the cliff face of our apartment building jolts me alert. A hawk! I lean out over the balcony and see its brown back and wings, following the shoreline about twenty metres out to sea. Intently and repeatedly, it flaps up and then dives almost to the water’s surface, behaving more like a fishing seagull than a hawk. The bird heads into the strong Westerly towards Station Pier and the Tasmanian ferry and, in seconds, it was out of sight around the corner of our building.

This was the first time I’d seen a hawk here, so close to the water. I wonder if there is a connection between my two unusual bird sightings. Had the hawk been around earlier and frightened the blackbird into our carpark?