Thanks to all for your replies....
Hmm!, interesting. It is something to do with the networking. When I isolate the MacBook and switch off AirPort, the problem stops. And now that I am reconnected it has still stopped - we'll see for how long...
I am running a MacBook Pro (Leopard), iMac 24...
I see it on all my machines.... Running different flavours of Tiger and Leopard. This is on local drives.
I just tried the "Developer" folder on my MacBook Pro - in list mode - and after expanding the nested folders the system has changed the Mod date of the Developer Folder to "Today"?
This is a problem that has been bugging me for sometime now - It seems that whenever you open a nested folder in the finder, it changes the modification date of the parent directory, this is a real pain, especially in the nested folders of the ~/Library folder. I often trawl through these...