Global recurrence plots (GRPs) and windowed recurrence quantification analysis (WRQA) are two recurrence paradigms which find wide applications to detect the onset of instability in a dynamic system. The present work reports the attempt to employ these recurrence paradigms to assess the effect of frontal gust on the force patterns of an insect-sized flapping wing in the inclined-stroke plane. Horizontal and vertical forces generated by the flapping wing in the presence of gusts of the form uGuw=u∞uw+(uguw)sin(2πfgfwt) were numerically estimated in the 2D reference frame for Re = 150. Nine gusts with combinations of the ratio of gust frequency to wing’s flapping frequency, fg/fw = 0.1, 0.5 and 1 and ratio of gust velocity amplitude to root mean square averaged flapping velocity, ug/uw = 0.1, 0.5 and 1 were considered. Recurrence studies of the forces were carried out to find out the gusty condition, which would trigger an onset of unstable behaviour. Studies indicated a possible onset of instability in the force patterns for gust with fg/fw = 0.1 and ug/uw = 1. The onset of unstable behaviour was prominently captured by WRQA of the vertical force coefficient based on determinism (DET) and laminarity (LAM) series. © 2019, Indian Academy of Sciences.