Big Bird has ruffled feathers. The avian star is vying for attention with a newcomer on Sesame Street--Dakota Starblanket. Dakota will join the cast in April and May to teach children the meaning of sibling rivalry. "Big Bird represents the child viewer," explains Dakota's mother, Buffy Sainte-Marie, 36, a regular Sesame Street guest. "He and I were friends. I even took him to New Mexico's Taos Indian pueblo to tape a show. Now suddenly here's my baby and my husband, Sheldon Wolfchild. Big Bird feels in the way." The singer originally went on the show to teach its 8 million viewers something about her own Cree culture and to show that "Indians say more than 'ugh' and 'how.' " -

Is there more to love on Lucy than there used to be? No, Actress Lucille Ball, 65, still boasts the same trim figure she had when she first came to Hollywood as a Goldwyn Girl in 1934. But to impersonate Singer Sophie Tucker on Bob Hope's All-Star Tribute to Vaudeville (NBC, March 25), Ball donned a special "fat suit." "I always admired Sophie's elegant arrogance," says Ball, who carefully practiced Tucker's mannerisms and purposeful strut across the stage. But Lucy could not master Sophie's sweeping bow. "When you take a fast bow in a fat suit, you pitch forward," she explains. "That bow almost landed me in the orchestra pit."

Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed that appointing Earl Warren Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was "the biggest damn fool thing I ever did." In The Memoirs of Earl Warren, to be published in June by Doubleday, the late Chief Justice spells out some details of his strained relationship with Ike. The former President, he writes, thought the Warren court was too soft on Communists. "What would you do with Communists in America?" the Chief Justice asked Eisenhower. His reply: "I would kill the s.o.b.'s." Nor did Eisenhower agree with the court's decision on school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education. Shortly before the opinion was announced, he invited the Chief Justice to a White House dinner with the counsel for the segregation states and made a quiet plea on their behalf. "These are not bad people," Ike told Warren. "All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in schools alongside some big overgrown Negroes."

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"No comment, Howard," mumbled No. 1 ranked Heavyweight Contender George Foreman to his sometime broadcasting colleague Howard Cosell after dropping a unanimous 12-round decision in San Juan, Puerto Rico, last week to 3-to-l underdog Jimmy Young. Young's cover-up tactics and counterpunching created more than another dent in the former champ's fragile ego. They put a crimp in the multimillion-dollar plans of Promoter Don King to get Foreman back in the ring for a rematch with Titleholder Muhammad Ali. After flirting with retirement following his victory over Ken Norton last fall, the aging Ali has signed to fight unknown Italian Lorenzo Zanon for about $4 million in Korea this May. Zanon, not even heavyweight champ in his own country, will presumably be paid in pasta for the anticipated pasting.

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Strapped for cash back in 1967, Alex Haley sold the paperback rights to his still unwritten Roots to Dell Publishing Co. for a mere $7,500. In 1976 Dell became a subsidiary of Doubleday, Haley's hard-cover publisher, and last week the author slapped a suit against them designed to void that earlier paperback deal. The suit contends that if Dell were not owned by Doubleday, the paperback rights might easily be sold to another publisher for $2 million plus royalties. Haley, now a millionaire, charged also that Doubleday had failed to promote his book adequately and to give distributors enough copies. His demand: $5 million in punitive damages. Meanwhile, the Roots phenomenon continues. 2 A two-volume LP set has been produced by Warner and titled Alex Haley Speaks.

The Texas Baptist convention was spending $1.5 million for their new newspaper ads and "God Spots"--TV and radio commercials that are testaments to conversions to Christ. Searching for a surprise convert with a household name, their ad agency settled on Eldridge Cleaver, 41, confessed rapist and ex-Black Panther who is still facing a murder rap for his part in a 1968 Shootout. As a fugitive, Cleaver lost faith in Communism, he explains before the cameras in his 30-second TV spot. "Then I met a different kind of revolutionary--Jesus Christ. Can He be trusted to untangle a messed-up life? I'm living proof of it."

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In more than half a century as a photographer, Ansel Adams has staked out as his domain the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the aspens of New Mexico and the rocky shores of California. Although an Adams print goes for between $900 and $1,200 these days and his work is on display at museums and galleries across the nation, he still works nonstop and meets with students in Yosemite National Park. To celebrate his 75th birthday, Adams announced he was setting up a $250,000 trust fund for a curatorship in photography at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. MOMA, says Adams, is the "granddaddy of them all, the museum that has raised photography to the level of art."

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"Look, no blonde," quipped Britain's Prince Charles as he emerged from a nine-day safari in the Kenyan bush. The remark was the Prince's way of squelching Fleet Street rumors that he had camped out with a woman. After meeting with President Jomo Kenyatta, he prepared for a trip to the Kenyan coast and on to Ghana. Climbing into the Andover twin prop plane that he is piloting himself for part of the trip, the heir to the British throne couldn't resist yet another jab at the press. "Here's your mystery blonde bird," said Charles as he tossed a package wrapped in tissue paper at a reporter. Inside was a stuffed pigeon adorned with a long golden wig of human hair.

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