Images of eagles cover postal service vehicles and uniforms nationwide, but in the Aleutian Islands, real live eagles are landing on the heads of customers picking up mail at the Dutch Harbor Post Office.

With eight eagle attacks reported outside the Dutch Harbor Post Office this year, the U.S. Postal Service is conferring with another federal agency on the best way to protect customers, according to Dawn Peppinger, USPS marketing manager in Anchorage.

Peppinger said she only learned of the problem last week after a local postal employee contacted her in response to questions from the Bristol Bay Times - Dutch Harbor Fisherman. The next day, she said she'd contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage for advice.

While she said she's still researching the issue, one likely solution is to remove the nest from the nearby cliff following nesting season, with a FWS permit and working with the property owner.

Eagle attacks are routine during the summer nesting season in Unalaska, and warning signs are posted near where people walk under the cliffs where the protective raptors are tending their offspring.

On June 29, the Unalaska Department of Public Safety reported another attack. "Caller reported having received several lacerations, requiring medical attention, after being attacked by one of the pair of nesting eagles at the Dutch Harbor Post Office. Additional warning signs were provided for the parking lot at the PO."

The City of Unalaska has previously obtained federal permits to remove the nests of attack eagles. In the case of the nest on the cliff near city hall across from the medical clinic, it was removed and the ledge it sat on was fenced in. But eagles soon built a replacement home nearby on the cliff in 2012. The city fire department responded by removing the new nest with a fire hose, washing it away.

Hundreds of eagle inhabit Unalaska. They are commonly seen scavenging in trash bins, and at the city trash landfill. Local residents reporting attacks in recent years include Fred Elias, while walking, and Ben Bollock, while jogging near a big nest the size of a laundry basket.

Peppinger said she is a lifetime Alaskan and 30-year postal employee. She said this is the first time she's heard of eagle attacks outside a post office. But she noted that different wildlife encounters are familiar, involving moose in Anchorage.

Moose are a regular presence outside her office at the Midtown Post Office, adjacent to the Loussac Library on 36th Ave., she said. When moose move through a parking lot, she said workers wait inside their cars until the large mammals are gone. And the moose also bed down next to the post office, though on the back side, not near the public entrance, she said.

In Anchorage, the urban moose are a tourist draw, with the convention and visitor's bureau promoting them as "Big Wildlife" in the state's largest city. Likewise, the eagle is a public relations tool for the USPS, with logos of eagle heads adorning signs and packaging. But at the Dutch Harbor Post Office, the customers' heads are the targets of their claws.

Jim Paulin can be reached at jpaulin@reportalaska.com