@rod I feel like the middle part of your post is incongruent with the first and last paragraph (though, perhaps I'm just misunderstanding).
I think the fact that these claims are
not coming from people who take nightly pleasure (or for that matter, an entire career) in viewing the skies through astronomical instruments is telling. For, these are the people that have taken time to learn the many eccentricities of of the night sky and thus, do not get fooled into reporting "UFO!" every time something "odd" occurs.
It seems more often than not, a report of a UFO can be explained by something much more commonplace; i.e. an Iridium Flare, a used rocket stage (often spinning, thus the changing amounts of reflective surface from the perspective of the viewer giving the odd effect of "blinking" or "strobing"), a meteor, a de-orbiting satellite (or any space junk), or many other "mundane" events of varying levels of likelihood and/or "oddness".
If there were UFO's (of the ET variety) buzzing all over our skies, wouldn't it likely be these people who sounded the alarm? People who statistically spend more time looking at the sky than any others?
I would love if it were true, if the stellar neighborhood was teeming with life. However, unfortunately, there is no evidence to support this that cannot be also explained by the ordinary.