Even though Countable::count method is called when the object implementing Countable is used in count() function, the second parameter of count, $mode, has no influence to your class method.
$mode is not passed to Countable::count:
<?php
class Foo implements Countable
{
public function count()
{
var_dump(func_get_args());
return 1;
}
}
count(new Foo(), COUNT_RECURSIVE);
?>
var_dump output:
array(0) {
}