Unused Bird Sprites

Remember when I said I wasn't going to rip another spritesheet anytime soon? I lied. While I was doing research for another post, I noticed that the Unnamed Bird Rahi had sprites that aren't used in the final game. One thing led to another, and here we are:

 

At this point, you may be thinking "wait a minute, there are twice as many shadows as birds there!" Weird, huh? Also, the "used" shadows are shaped differently from the "used" birds, while the "unused" shadows are pixel-perfect silhouettes of the "unused" birds.

My going theory is that the "unused" shadows were temporary sprites dating back to a demo version of the game where the bird's animations used 10 frames. As for why all ten frames are still in the game, it looks like someone stopped revising the bird's sprites midway through once the decision was made that the "unused" sprites would, well, not be used. This also explains why they weren't revised to look more like true shadows.