tar & ssh: strange gzip error message?

[Zev Thompson]

Hi all,

If I want to copy a bunch of files over ssh without extra servers, it's 
easy enough to use the following command:

[user at beastie]$ ssh user at example.com "cd /directory/to/copy && tar -cvf 
- *" | tar -xf - -C .

This works without complaint. However, when I change the options passed 
to tar, adding gzip compression on one end and decompression on the 
other:

[user at beastie]$ ssh user at example.com "cd /directory/to/copy && tar 
-cvzf - *" | tar -xzf - -C .

I get this error message:

gzip: stdin: decompression OK, trailing garbage ignored
tar: Child died with signal 13
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Is my method wrong? It appears that the files transferred just fine, 
but I'm still curious as to what's going on. Thanks in advance to any 
replies.

Cheers,
Zev