homing

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of going home.
• Coming home; characterized by an instinctive tendency to return home on being released from restraint: applied to the lower animals, especially to birds, such as carrier-pigeons, that have the faculty of returning from great distances to the place where they were reared, whence their usefulness in conveying written messages.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• adjective Home-returning; -- used specifically of carrier pigeons.
• adjective any pigeon trained to return home from a distance. Also called carrier pigeon. Most are bred from the domestic pigeon Columba livia. Homing pigeons are used for sending back messages or for flying races. By carrying the birds away and releasing them at gradually increasing distances from home, they may be trained to return with more or less certainty and promptness from distances up to four or five hundred miles. The birds typically do not stop on their way home, and may average as much as 60 miles per hour on their return trip. If the distance is increased much beyond 400 miles, the birds are unable to cover it without stopping for a prolonged rest, and their return becomes doubtful. The record for returnig from a distance is close to 1,200 miles. Homing pigeons are not bred for fancy points or special colors, but for strength, speed, endurance, and intelligence or homing instinct. Although used since ancient times, homing pigeons have been largely displaced for practical purposes by radio and electronic communications, but they are still used in some special situations at the end of the 20th century. They were used in military operations as recently as in World War II.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb Present participle of home.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• adjective orienting or directing homeward or to a destination