98 | Chapter 5
Incubation duties completed, male Emperor Penguins head across the ice to
open water, leaving their mates to tend the newly- hatched chick.between foraging bouts, the females huddled together to minimize heat
loss, exactly like their mates at the colony. Life was evidently as grim for
them as it was for their mates.
During interludes in incubation some seabirds cover truly amazing
distances. Where the distances are large, say greater than 500 km, it is
very evident that the birds do not fan out equally in all directions from
the colony. Rather, they head in specific directions, pass more or less
rapidly through vast tracts of ocean that presumably offer little, and then
concentrate their foraging efforts in certain defined oceanic regions. The
features of those preferred regions are explored in Chapter 8.
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Once the eggs have hatched and the chicks have stretched their legs and
stubby wings after that long period of enclosure, the routines of the
parents change. Initially the change may not be especially abrupt. Among