If you had the bird for only 3 days, it didn't catch anything under your care. If it died of an illness, it had it before. The only things I can think of that would kill a bird in that amount of time would be poisoning, lack of water, or stress. Birds can get stressed easily, and it can be fatal. Do you by chance own a cat?

Stress is the only thing we can think of. We do have cats, but the bird was in a room from which the cats are banned (enforced by a closed door), up high in its cage. We weren't using any of our non-stick cookware, and we don't use aerosol cleaning products in any case. We didn't use any cleaners in the room the bird was in during the time the bird was with us.

He showed some stress behaviors (poofing up and shaking his feathers), but not a lot as far as I could determine. He seemed to be eating. He was alert and had no obvious discharge or anything like that. He was well groomed.

The only thing we can determine was that maybe we handled him too much (though we did not do so excessively).

We decided against the necropsy, after finding out it would cost more than $200, and with the shop not too worried about the cause of death.

We'll get another and try again.

From a different pet shop, I'm hoping...

It happens. Stress is the most probable cause. You might let the next one adjust to the new cage and surroundings for a couple days before handling it.

I _HATE_ to loose animals, but it's part of being a pet owner. My wife's cockatiel died about a year ago, for no apparent reason. We had the bird for about 5 years. Just woke up one morning, and it was dead.

I have a Red-lorried Amazon Parrot that's been with me for 20 years. She's really a part of the family.