Hey now. =]Blame the new admin
My guess is it's the latter.The only browser I see that creates a space is IE (6 & 7). Checking it in 5 other browsers there is no space, so would you say it's consistently wrong amongst the 5 or that IE is wrong and it happens to be favorable in this case?
Add white space to your avatar. Problem solved.
add some transparent pixels at the top edge and save as png or gif