Sounds likely, yes...
It is really tricky to know if you should let out/shouldn't respond to yelling because we do want them to know if they say 'i gotta go out' we'll let them out or they may decide 'hey ho, shit on the carpet it is'... but of course when we respond we teach them we will respond and ... teenagers are more than capable of deciding that 'shout at the squirrels in the buddleia' is every bit as urgent as 'liquid shit imminent CODE BROWN ALERT'...
With rescues of Pods age, I would favour in the first weeks a 'ill respond to every bork' policy... and normally I find they go through a 'I will test the absolute shit out of this to see if it really truly works' phase... and then calm the fuck down over it.
And then, as you are doing, a 'I will let you out sufficiently often you don't have to shit on the carpet, but NOT every time you want to abuse the local wildlife' policy is more appropriate.. and he's fathoming out what works/doesn't work, and is starting to engage brain and think of something else to do...
But the art meets science when it comes to knowing when it is the right time to do this... and I suspect Pod is still in the transition stage, where some days he probably does need to go for a shit a lot of the time... and some days he is just being a Shouty Kenneth.
I'd like to say this gets better but actually Stick Dog is nearly 9, has no such rescue history, and can still sometimes throw a MASSIVE wobbler because she wants to Shouty Kenneth at (potential) rats or squirrels... and she can chuck a tantrum that lasts hours, with horrible noises like the 'charlie says' cat noises, if you remember those. She can genuinely yowlgrrrrrrrrrooooooooheeeeeeeeeeeoooooohyowwwwwwwwlgrrrrrrrrr for hours and hours, she can do it on the in breath as well as the out breath, so it is non-stop.
She also only has two ways to ask for something. Sit by it and stare at it, useless if we are not in the room but in almost 9 years she hasn't realised this. Or full on savage GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrrrrr noises, occasionally throwing in arse-slamming my chair if I am in it.
There is no inbetween.
I have sometimes ended a Rat Obsession period by sending The Boy out to poke the undergrowth with a stick to either send out a rat or prove there is no rat, and this often works (unless we get a very sticky rat that won't be bolted!), so you could try poking the Buddleia.
I don't know if that was helpful or not really. Sorry!
Play it by ear, keep making notes and adding up the data you get back from the PodTestSubject... and eventually you'll (mostly) have him figured out.