stat /etc/localtime 38000 times on startup?

I just traced starting up a postmaster, and got over 38000 lines like this:
  stat64("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1267, ...}) = 0

I assume it comes from the timezone library, but it seems highly 
inefficient. Anyone know why we might get this?

cheers

andrew