Hume started the quarterly journal "Stray Feathers" in 1872. At that time the only journal for the Indian region that published on ornithology was the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal" and Hume published only two letters in 1870, mainly being a list of errors in the list of Godwin-Austen which had been reduced to an abstract. He had wondered if there was merit to start a new journal and in that idea was supported by Stoliczka, who was an editor for the "Journal of the Asiatic Society":