SummarySuppose that organisms occur as entities that are either singlets or doublets, that entities are able to signal to one another the presence of an observer, and that, as a result, they detect the presence of the observer according to a non-homogeneous birth process. If the behaviour of individuals (and hence their detection by the observer) is thereafter determined by a damage process, the distribution of the number of individuals seen by the observer is found to be a geometric*pseudo-geometric convolution. Properties of the distribution and maximum-likelihood estimation are described. The model is shown to give a very good fit to the ruffed grouse data of GATES et al. (1968, Biometrics). Variants of the model are discussed.