A death in the family if you must know

Otto (our new bird) died. Why can we not seem to keep a parakeet alive around here? This is our 4th bird! Two of them lasted about a year each, but two of them have lasted weeks to months. Otto is the shortest lived thus far. I was hoping the guinea pig would be the next animal to go as he is a pain in the you-know-what to take care of, but he seems to be doing great. Birds really are great pets (pretty to look at, easy to care for and apparently short lived) so I think we will get another one (or two) sometime. I don't understand why we appear to have bad luck with them. Fintan was devastated for about 15 minutes, but has moved on--clearly they were not as close as we thought!