January 9, 1985

A picture appeared erroneously yesterday with a report about whooping cranes in the Science Watch column of Science Times. The bird shown was a great blue heron.

Donald T. Regan, the loyal Treasury Secretary whom President Reagan made his chief of staff today, has been an enigma through the first four years of the Administration. It has never been clear, as his views on issues have shifted and changed over that period, where he really leans. The simple answer is that Donald Regan shifts where the President shifts and leans where the President leans. Rarely since he was first appointed to the Treasury has Mr. Regan stood apart from the President on the nation's major economic questions - the budget deficit, growth, taxes, budget cuts - that often produced open splits within the Administration and sometimes even within the White House staff.

New York City's Transit Authority won the right today to hire more than 1,000 supervisors outside the Civil Service process for jobs that will also be outside union jurisdiction. The authority said the ruling by the State Civil Service Commission would lead to improved bus and subway service. The authority would be free to hire better managers and to dismiss those new managers whose performance turned out to be unacceptable, the authority said. The unions representing transit supervisors said they planned to challenge today's ruling in court.

''We can't be sure where these negotiations will lead and, clearly, we have a long road ahead of us.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that the police may act without a warrant to stop and briefly detain a person they know is wanted for investigation by a police department in another city. In another ruling, the Court held that Trans World Airlines violated the law by forcing 60-year-old pilots to retire, rather than take other jobs in the cockpit. But the ruling limited the damages the pilots could recover. (Page D7.)