Local clone checks out wrong branch based on remote HEAD

I'm having some unexpected behavior when cloning a remote repo that has several branches at the same commit. On the remote side, the HEAD is 'trunk':

git@remote ~/repositories/akincisor/site.git $ cat HEAD ref: refs/heads/trunk

After cloning this with a standard `git clone`, the refs are:

[11:48][tom@solid:~/dev/sandbox/site(release)]$ git branch -r -v
  origin/HEAD    a52528a Fixed some routing problems
  origin/release a52528a Fixed some routing problems
  origin/trunk   a52528a Fixed some routing problems

And the checked out branch is 'release' instead of 'trunk' as I would expect:

[11:48][tom@solid:~/dev/sandbox/site(release)]$ git branch
* release

I'm guessing that the first branch that matches the remote HEAD revision is being checked out instead of the actual remote branch. I would expect the correct branch to be chosen regardless of where the branches are pointing.

Tom

-- Tom Preston-Werner github.com/mojombo