Help me understanding assets path

I've put my favicon into app/assets/images and include in my header

   <%= favicon_link_tag 'my_favicon.jpg' %>

The favicon is correctly recognized by the browser, so it works perfectly. When viewing the source code, I see to my surprise that the following HTML code is generated:

  <link href="/assets/my_favicon.jpg" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" />

Aside from the MIME type (I had expected that rails would generate image/jpeg), what really puzzles me is the path. The file is definitely in /assets/images, not in /assets . How can the browser locate the file?