remote tracking branch deletion problem

Hello together,

while playing around with git, I stumbled upon a strange remote tracking branch deletion problem. It seems I'm unable to delete the remote tracking branch "origin/HEAD" using git 1.6.0.5. Here's what I did:

[tomj@storm repo]$ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/repo/.git/

[tomj@storm repo]$ echo "test" >test [tomj@storm repo]$ git add test [tomj@storm repo]$ git commit -m "Test"

[tomj@storm tmp]$ git clone repo alice Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/alice/.git/

[tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD
  origin/master

[tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r -d origin/HEAD Deleted remote branch origin/HEAD. [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r -d origin/master Deleted remote branch origin/master.

[tomj@storm alice]$ ls -al .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD -rw-rw---- 1 tomj intra2net 32 19. Dec 12:43 .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD [tomj@storm alice]$ git branch -r error: refs/remotes/origin/HEAD points nowhere!

Is this supposed to be? git 1.6.1.rc3.35.gc0ceb shows a similar behavior.

Cheers, Thomas