Having passed the egg to the male, the exhausted female must depart quickly. She must eat soon or she will die. As the winter progresses, the father will be severely tested. The mother will be tested as well. Her return to the sea is considerably more dangerous than the original trip to the nesting ground. It is colder now, and she will have lost almost one -third of her body weight producing the egg. She is literally starving. Of course, the fathers are nearly starving too, but for them a meal is far off in the distance. By the time their vigil atop the egg is over, the penguin fathers will have gone without food for 125 days and will have endured one of the most deadly and violent winters on earth, all for the chick.

As the fathers settle into their long wait at the breeding ground, the second storms arrive. The temperature is now about -80, and this is without taking into account the wind, which may blow at 100 miles an hour. Though the males May be aggressive during the rest of the year, at this time they are completely docile, and they act as a united and cooperative team. They brace the storms by merging their thousand bodies into a single mass, they take turns and each of them will get a chance to stand inside the middle of the huddle where it is warmer.

As the move about, the fathers will balance their eggs like tightrope walkers. On the other hand, the exhausted mothers have walked seventy miles, and are now back where they started three months ago, although they are not yet near the sea, as the winter has frozen along the shore, and they must walk several more miles before they reach the sea. To survive they must reach the new ice edge, or find a new opening, and sometimes the search will last for days.