Though quite common on the low slopes of the hill country and in the lowlands this small highly arboreal barbet tends to keep to the tops of trees making it unobtrusive & difficult to photograph.
Rasmussen and Anderton in the Ripley Guide: Birds of South Asia (2005), separate Ceylon Small Barbet and the Malabar Barbet of the Western Ghats (India) though other authorities still consider them conspecific.