In 1998 Ian Menzies found a crushed leaf beetle on the busy walkways opposite the Shell Building, near Waterloo Station. Despite its unfortunate broken state, the specimen was immediately obvious as the pretty and distinctive Chrysolina americana. Not American in the least, this southern European species had been found occasionally in the UK: emerging from some pine cones in a Cheshire kitchen (brought back from a holiday on the Continent, 1963), and on some rosemary bushes growing in the RHS Wisley Gardens in 1995. This beetle had been spreading through Europe, increasing its range, over the previous decade so its arrival here had long been anticipated.
A rubbish picture of Chrysolina americana, the rosemary beetle, but clearly showing the metallic red and green stripes.
Since Waterloo was right on my doorstep, I arranged to drive up with Peter Hodge to go and hunt for the thing. The many hundreds of lavender bushes had obviously been planted pretty recently, part of the Jubilee Gardens landscaping for the London Eye which was being erected nearby. It was on these that the beetle was chewing, and it wasn’t long before we found some.
Wandering around with an insect net, I often get approached by passers by curious to know what I’m up to. Here were Peter and I, presenting a strange tableau: two blokes on their hands and knees, heads down, backsides in the air, grubbing about at the edge of the paving stones, and occasionally bashing a small lavender bush unceremoniously over the nets. It wasn’t long before someone paused and asked what I was doing. “Looking for a beetle” was my response, but before I could go further into its biogeography or potential horticultural importance, he’d come back with “Where did you lose it?”
Richard Jones
Bugman Jones 
As a pollination ecologist who is regularly found loitering outside people’s houses trying to photograph/catch insects on flowering plants in their garden (without trespassing!), I sympathise.