Nankeen kestrels (Falco cenchroides) have been trained to windhover in a wind tunnel. The presence of an updraft allows the kestrel to maintain a stationary hover without flapping. The kestrels were subjected to known and controlled vertical gusts, and their flight kinematics were tracked using motion-capture cameras. A dataset of 468 gust encounters has been recorded across a range of different gust profiles. Consistent trends were present in the movements of birds’ wings and tail in response to upwards and downwards step gusts. The delay times of the gust responses suggest that changes to wing dihedral, wing incidence, and tail incidence are passively initiated by aerodynamic loading rather than active muscle control. The study is ongoing, and it is hoped that insights gained will inspire the development of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with greater steadiness and less flight-path divergence when encountering gusts and turbulence.