cvs attempts mothership connection?

[Skunk Worx]

i'm a newb. does this imply cvs is attempting to connect to it's 
mothership without any action on my part ?

this happened while learning to use cvs with ssh. i don't care about the 
errors, it's just group permisisons or some such, i'm more curious about 
the unexpected ssh connection attempt to another site.

this is a fairly up2date fc3 machine (maybe 3/4 days out of yum update).

$ cvs status
skunkworx at localhost's password:
cvs status: failed to create lock directory for `/home/cvs/cvsroot' 
(/home/cvs/cvsroot/#cvs.lock): Permission denied
cvs status: failed to obtain dir lock in repository `/home/cvs/cvsroot'
cvs [status aborted]: read lock failed - giving up
The authenticity of host 'cvs.sourceforge.net (66.35.250.207)' can't be 
established.
DSA key fingerprint is (snipped).
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? no
Host key verification failed.
cvs [status aborted]: end of file from server (consult above messages if 
any)

$ echo $CVSROOT
:ext:skunkworx at localhost:/home/cvs/cvsroot
$ echo $CVS_RSH
ssh