The phrase "the life out of [someone]" is basically an intensifier. It implies extreme violence and/or murderous intent. It's often used for hyperbole. If you just say:
Some inhibitions are good, such as the one that prevents us from choking people we dislike.
it sounds more like we have a specific urge to choke we we dislike. Using "choking the life out of people we dislike" makes it clear that the author is talking about any kind of extreme destructive behavior. The exaggeration makes it sound almost funny.
A similar (but vulgar) phrase is "beating the crap out of [someone or something]". It doesn't mean you're literally hitting something until poop comes out, it just means you're hitting it excessively. This phrase is often used metaphorically. For example, if you play sports and you lose a game badly, you could say something like:
The other team beat the crap out of us last night.
The use of violence as a metaphor for emotional distress is common in American English. Whether you're being choked, crushed, or beaten depends on what's troubling you. You could be "crushed" by a heavy workload, or "beaten down" by criticism, for instance. I'm not sure how common this is in other dialects.
Warning: Many people consider it rude to use sexual violence as a metaphor, even in casual situations. In particular, it's best not to use "rape" in this way, even though grammatically it works the same way.
"Draw" used to mean "pull" or "attract". You still hear it once in a while: you "draw" cards from a deck, a celebrity can "draw" a crowd. Think about the word drawer.
"Ire" means anger or irritation.
"Draw ire" is an old-fashioned way to say "get people mad".
Best Answer
The phrase probably comes from the proverb (from Oxford Dictionaries):
In the proverb, the "early bird" gains an advantage by arriving somewhere where worms are first, which allows it to catch the most worms and so have the most food and be more likely to survive (or be able to feed its young).
In the case of the phrase "early-bird period" (note that it should be hyphenated), it means a period in which any participants will have an advantage. Although I don't think the phrase "early-bird period" is particularly common, there are similar phrases. For example, early-bird discounts (or deals), where people who buy early receive a special price.
An early-bird discount is is often used where the offeror has a significant investment or expense and wants to recoup the cost as quickly as possible. You'll probably see it often with holidays and travel deals, or with crowdfunding campaigns where a product may not necessarily exist at the time of order.
It would then not be odd to describe the period in which the early-bird discount is offered as the early-bird period.
As @Willow Rex's answer shows, "early bird" does have another meaning:
As does the word "period":
So it is possible that "early-bird period" could mean "an early (morning) class," I would not expect this meaning unless it was abundantly clear from context that it referred to classes.
If "early bird" were being used in this way, I'd probably expect early classes to be described as "early-bird classes" or "lectures" instead, especially in relation to college or university classes, because primary/secondary school classes and class times are generally set, whereas there's generally more leeway with tertiary education (so it could be possible for a student to take a later class and avoid "early-bird classes").