This paper deals with the adaptive backstepping hovering control for a quadrotor with model parameter uncertainties. In this paper, the backstepping based technique is utilized to design a nonlinear adaptive controller which can compensate for the motor thrust factor and the drag coefficient of a quadrotor. First, the quadrotor nonlinear dynamics is derived using Newton-Euler formulation. In particular, we use the ${pi}/4$ shifted coordinate for x- and y-axis of a quadrotor. Second, an adaptive backstepping based attitude and altitude tracking control method is presented. The system stability and the convergence of tracking errors are proven using the Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, the simulation results are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.