I am now remembering the sad day my still in single digits self found our budgie, George, dead in the bottom of the cage.

That's another thing to consider. Small parrot types including budgies and cockatiels are prone to dying quite suddenly even if you DO care for them properly. George was well looked after and we still have no idea why he died (I suspect that it was night fright, as he hadn't been around any other budgies to catch anything, but it didn't seem worth doing a post portem on the poor thing).

Budgies, parakeets and cockatiels are notorious for showing no signs of being sick or only very subtle ones and while I wasn't at all traumatized by finding the body, just very upset, but the sudden loss of a pet can be very upsetting to a child.